SpaceX Starship Caught for First Time on Flight 15 | Starbase Texas
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On Saturday, November 14, 2026, Starship returned to Starbase Texas, and "changed everything". On Friday, November 13, Starship lifted off from Starbase Texas on its 15th flight.
Flight 15 started with the Super Heavy booster ascending away from Pad 2 at Starbase under the power of 33 Raptor engines. The successful first-stage ascent was followed by hot-staging and Starship continuing its path to space with six Raptor engines.
The booster performed its directional flip maneuver and relit 32 of the planned 33 Raptor engines for the boostback burn. The boostback burn ended early due to low fuel mass, with the root cause under investigation. The booster’s guidance, navigation and control triggered an automated abort during coast and diverted itself successfully to an offshore landing location. It successfully executed a landing burn with the engines cutting off while hovering over the Gulf. Upon landing burn shutdown, the Super Heavy’s flight termination system was triggered.
Starship completed a nominal ascent burn and entered into a brief coast before reigniting a single Raptor engine for an orbital insertion burn.
After making it to orbit, Starship deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites. Contact was made soon after with every satellite which are already beginning to raise their orbits to join the Starlink constellation.
Following payload deploy, Starship entered into a long coast phase around Earth. After monitoring its systems for more than 20 hours in space, the SpaceX flight control team prepared to return Starship to the launch site.
Starship successfully relit a single Raptor sea-level engine and performed a deorbit burn, breaking out of orbit and beginning its path through Earth’s atmosphere.
Starship navigated its way back to the east coast of Texas, flew a final swoosh maneuver out over the Gulf, and approached the same launch site it had just left 22.5 hours prior. After breaking through the clouds, three Raptor engines ignited for a landing flip and slow descent into Mechzilla’s waiting arms, which closed to catch Starship for the very first time.
Watch the full flight and follow updates here: https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-15
NASA plans to use a lunar lander version of Starship to deliver astronauts and cargo to the Moon during the Artemis IV mission and beyond through the Human Landing System (HLS) Program.
https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/starship/
https://www.spacex.com/media/starship_users_guide_v1.pdf
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