SpaceX (SPCX.US) Starship's 15th Test Flight: Booster recovery failed for unknown reasons; first orbital round-trip mission still awaits upper stage "tower catch" landing

According to Zhitong Finance APP, on Friday local time, SpaceX (SPCX.US) conducted its 15th Starship flight mission in Texas. The core objective of this mission was to achieve the first orbital round trip in rocket history—precisely returning to the launch site after entering orbit. This is also a critical verification in Elon Musk’s process of creating a fully reusable rocket system.

According to the mission plan, the uncrewed Starship upper stage would re-enter the atmosphere and return to the launch tower on Saturday after nearly a day in orbit, decelerate and land using engine thrust, and be recovered by a pair of pioneering giant mechanical arms known as the “chopstick arms.”

SpaceX originally planned to recover the Super Heavy booster using the same “chopstick arm” technology just minutes after stage separation.

However, this time the Super Heavy booster deviated from its return trajectory for unknown reasons and headed toward a designated area over the Gulf of Mexico, where it briefly hovered before exploding above the sea surface. The cause of the malfunction has not yet been determined.

The ground control team still hopes the Starship upper stage can return and land smoothly. SpaceX stated that about 27 minutes after launch the rocket successfully entered orbit.

As a result of this news, the stock price fell about 2% in after-hours trading as of press time.

Key Verification of Reusable Technology

If the Starship upper stage can return to the launch platform intact, it would mark a major breakthrough for Musk’s technological path. Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of significantly reducing space launch costs through fully reusable rockets.

The entire Starship system consists of a crew and cargo-carrying upper stage, and a Super Heavy booster below, standing as tall as a 40-story building. The rocket lifts off from SpaceX’s South Texas Starbase near Brownsville on the Gulf Coast of Mexico.

This was Starship’s 15th test flight since 2023, and the second time it carried a batch of operational Starlink satellites into orbit. This means the mission fulfills a dual role: it is both a commercial revenue-generating task for SpaceX’s satellite internet business and a high-risk test for the still-iterating rocket.

SpaceX explained during the livestream that about 36 minutes after launch, Starship began deploying 26 satellites, with the entire payload deployment process expected to last less than an hour.

In Musk’s space and artificial intelligence (AI) business layout, Starship is the core carrier for expanding the Starlink satellite network. In the future, the company also plans to deploy a batch of on-orbit AI computing clusters called “Starmind” based on Starship, moving toward positioning itself as a high-tech infrastructure service provider.

The last Starship launch occurred in September, during which some engines shut down in flight, but the rocket still successfully deployed its satellite payload into orbit. The mission, originally planned for 10 hours, lasted about 3 hours, with the upper stage splashing down intact in the Pacific Ocean before catching fire and being destroyed.

Return and Recovery Plan

In the mission plan for Friday, SpaceX hoped for both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage to return to the Texas launch site and be safely recovered by landing. The Starship upper stage was planned to land approximately 22 hours after launch. SpaceX stated that if the capture and recovery were completed successfully, it would mark “a milestone moment in making Starship reliable and rapidly reusable.”

Previously, SpaceX had three successful recoveries of the 72-meter-tall Super Heavy booster using the launch tower’s mechanical arms: after launch, the booster autonomously returned to Earth, descended vertically and slowly, and was firmly caught by the giant pair of arms on the tower. The last successful “tower capture recovery” occurred in March 2025.

The reasons for the failed booster recovery attempt this time remain unclear.

According to plan, the Starship upper stage would circle the Earth 14 times before deorbiting to attempt its first capture landing on Saturday afternoon local time.

Musk expects that by the first half of 2027, Starship could achieve a weekly launch cadence.

Since being selected as the crewed lunar lander for the Artemis moon landing program in 2021, NASA has provided about $3.2 billion for Starship development, with the total investment in this lunar program reaching several tens of billions of dollars. SpaceX itself has invested at least $1.5 billion in Starship development.

The goal of NASA and SpaceX is to use Starship for crewed lunar landings by 2028. However, analysts and industry engineers generally believe that several major testing milestones have yet to be completed, making a delay in the lunar landing timetable highly likely. One key node is the in-orbit fuel transfer between Starship tankers, which is the essential technical prerequisite for Starship to leave low Earth orbit and head for the Moon.

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is also developing a “Blue Moon” lander for NASA’s Artemis program. Next year, Blue Moon will conduct Artemis III docking tests in low Earth orbit together with Starship and NASA’s Orion spacecraft, paving the way for the formal Artemis IV lunar landing mission.