SpaceX successfully caught the upper stage of its Starship rocket from orbit on Saturday using its "chopsticks" mechanical arms at Starbase, Texas — the first time the company has recovered the spacecraft portion after an orbital flight.
SpaceX successfully caught the upper stage of its Starship rocket from orbit on Saturday, achieving a milestone the company described as the most ambitious test in the program's history.
The catch was made at SpaceX's Starbase facility in Texas using the launch tower's mechanical arms — nicknamed "chopsticks" — marking the first time the company had recovered the spacecraft portion of Starship after an orbital flight.
Test Flight 15 spanned two days. During the first phase on Friday, SpaceX failed to catch the rocket's booster and instead diverted it to an offshore splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, where it exploded before hitting the water.
The upper stage then continued into orbit, completing 14 loops around the Earth before returning to Starbase and landing on the launch tower, which the company calls Mechazilla.
The flight also had ripple effects on air travel. The Hawaii Department of Transportation issued a temporary pause on some West Coast flights Friday due to debris risk from the mission. Separately, the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop linked to telecommunications system failures. Both orders were subsequently lifted.
SpaceX also used the mission to deploy an additional 26 of its Starlink v3 satellites into orbit. The company's constellation already comprised more than 11,000 satellites in low Earth orbit, and a single Starship can carry up to 60 of the newer v3 units, the company has said.
Making Starship fully reusable is central to SpaceX's near-term commercial ambitions. The company relies on Starlink — currently its primary profit center — and needs Starship to accelerate the expansion of that satellite network.
Beyond commercial operations, SpaceX is under contract with NASA to use Starship to ferry astronauts and cargo between lunar orbit and the Moon's surface as part of the agency's Artemis program. CEO Elon Musk has also stated a broader goal of using the rocket to establish a human presence on Mars.
Saturday's catch reinforces how far the Starship program has advanced since its early test flights, which ended in explosions shortly after liftoff. The ability to recover the upper stage from orbit — not just the booster — brings the company closer to a fully reusable two-stage system, which is a prerequisite for the high flight-rate cadence SpaceX will need to meet its commercial and government commitments.
Jay Goldberg is a staff writer at TechEchelon covering technology, markets, and policy. He files the breaking news and deal coverage that move the publication's core desks.
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