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SpaceX launches Starship on ambitious 22-hour Flight 15 test, but aborts booster 'chopsticks' catch (video)
The company may still try to snag Starship's upper stage tomorrow (Nov. 14).
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STARBASE, Texas — SpaceX launched the 15th test flight of its massive Starship rocket today (Nov. 13) and is preparing the vehicle's upper stage for its first-ever return to the launch site in less than 24 hours.
Flight 15 lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase facility here in South Texas at 5:47 p.m. ET (2247 GMT; 4:47 p.m. local Texas time). The towering Super Heavy booster and Ship upper stage cleared the tower without incident and climbed into the skies under more than 18 million pounds of thrust from the booster's 33 Raptor 3 engines.
The flight continued nominally through its initial ascent, with the successful execution of Super Heavy's main engine cutoff and Ship's subsequent hot-staging — firing its own Raptors during separation from the booster — about 2.5 minutes after launch. Following stage separation, Super Heavy reoriented for a planned return to Starbase as Ship powered its way toward low Earth orbit (LEO).
SpaceX originally planned to catch Super Heavy with the Starbase launch tower's giant mechanical "chopstick" arms. But it wasn't to be: The company called off the catch attempt and brought the booster down for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about 6.5 minutes after launch, for reasons that were not immediately clear.
A successful catch would have been a significant milestone for SpaceX and its efforts to design Starship as a fully and rapidly reusable launch vehicle. It would have been the first successful recovery of a Version 3 (V3) Super Heavy, which SpaceX began flying earlier this year. The company previously recovered three of its V1 Super Heavy vehicles and reused two of those in later flights.
Ship's Raptors continued to fire following stage separation, completing their first burn just after eight minutes into flight. All went according to plan after that for Ship as well: A second engine burn lasting about 20 seconds parked Ship in LEO at an altitude of around 170 miles (275 kilometers) at T+26 minutes and 10 seconds.
"We’ve got a nominal orbit insertion, so Starship now in orbit around Earth for the second time ever," SpaceX's Dan Huot said during today's Flight 15 launch webcast. "That’s a really great moment."
Ship first reached orbit on Flight 14, which launched on Sept. 28.