SpaceX (SPCX.US) Starship 15th test flight: booster recovery fails for unknown reasons, first orbital round-trip mission still awaits upper stage "tower catch"

On Friday local time, SpaceX (SPCX.US) conducted the 15th flight mission of its Starship spacecraft in Texas. The core objective of this mission was to complete the first orbital round trip in rocket historyentering orbit and then returning precisely to the launch origin. This is also a key validation in Elon Musk's push to build a fully reusable rocket system. According to the mission plan, the uncrewed Starship upper stage was to fly in orbit for nearly a day before re-entering the atmosphere, returning to the launch tower on Saturday, decelerating for landing under engine control, and being recovered by a set of giant robotic arms on a pioneering mechanical capture device. SpaceX had originally planned to recover the Starship's Super Heavy booster with the same "chopstick arm" capture technology within just minutes after the two stages separated. However, the Super Heavy booster deviated from its return trajectory for unknown reasons, flying toward a designated area over the Gulf of Mexico. After briefly hovering in the air, it exploded not far above the sea surface. The cause of the malfunction has not yet been determined. The ground tracking and control team still hopes that the Starship upper stage can return smoothly and land. SpaceX said the vehicle successfully reached orbit about 27 minutes after launch. Affected by this news, as of press time, the stock fell about 2% in after-hours trading. Key validation of reusable technology If the Starship upper stage can return to the launch platform intact, it will mark a major breakthrough for Musk's technical roadmap. Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of sharply reducing space launch costs through fully reusable rockets. The entire Starship system consists of the Starship upper stage, which carries crew and payload, and the Super Heavy booster below it, with an overall height equivalent to a 40-story building. The rocket lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase in southern Texas, near Brownsville on the Gulf Coast. This was Starship's 15th test flight since 2023 and the second time it carried a batch of operational Starlink satellites to orbit. That means the mission had a dual nature: it was both a commercial revenue-generating mission for SpaceX's satellite internet business and a high-risk validation of a rocket still undergoing iteration. SpaceX said during the livestream that the Starship vehicle began releasing 26 satellites about 36 minutes after launch, with the entire payload deployment process expected to take less than an hour. In Musk's space and artificial intelligence (AI) business layout, Starship is the core vehicle for expanding the Starlink satellite network. In the future, the company also plans to use Starship to deploy a batch of in-orbit AI computing clusters called "Starmind," advancing toward a positioning as a high-tech infrastructure service provider. SpaceX's previous Starship launch was in September. Although some engines shut down in flight during that mission, the rocket still successfully reached orbit with satellite payloads. The mission, originally scheduled to last 10 hours, lasted only about 3 hours, and the upper stage splashed down intact in The Pacific before catching fire and being destroyed. Return and recovery plan In Friday's mission plan, SpaceX hoped that both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage would return to the Texas launch site and land safely for recovery. The Starship upper stage was scheduled to land about 22 hours after launch. SpaceX said that a successful capture and recovery would be "a milestone moment in advancing Starship toward reliable, rapid reuse." Previously, SpaceX had successfully captured and recovered the 72-meter-tall Super Heavy booster with the launch tower's robotic arms three times: the booster autonomously flew back to Earth several minutes after launch, descended slowly and vertically, and was steadily caught by a pair of giant robotic arms on the launch tower. The last successful "tower catch" recovery occurred in March 2025. The reason for the failure of this booster recovery attempt is currently unclear. As planned, the Starship upper stage will orbit the Earth 14 times before deorbiting and attempting its first capture-style landing on Saturday afternoon local time. Musk expects that by the first half of 2027, Starship may achieve a launch cadence of once per week. Since selecting Starship in 2021 as the crewed lunar lander for the Artemis lunar program, NASA has provided about US$3.2 billion in funding for Starship development, with the total investment in the lunar program reaching tens of billions of dollars. SpaceX itself has already invested at least US$1.5 billion in Starship research and development. NASA and SpaceX aim to achieve a crewed lunar landing with Starship in 2028. However, analysts and industry engineers generally believe that multiple major test objectives have yet to be achieved, and the lunar landing timeline will likely be delayed. One key milestone is completing in-orbit fuel transfer between Starship tanker spacecraft, a core technical prerequisite for Starship to leave low Earth orbit and travel to the Moon. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is also developing the "Blue Moon" lander for NASA's Artemis program. Next year, the Blue Moon lander will conduct docking tests in low Earth orbit with Starship and NASA's Orion spacecraft for Artemis III, paving the way for the subsequent formal Artemis IV lunar landing mission.