SpaceX catches upper stage of Starship rocket in historic first

After a booster explosion on Friday, SpaceX successfully caught the upper stage, or spacecraft, portion of its massive Starship rocket from orbit on Saturday — a triumphant milestone for the company.

SpaceX made the historic catch using its “chopsticks,” mechanical arms attached to a launch tower, at its facility in Starbase, Texas.

Test Flight 15, the most ambitious Starship test yet, marked the first time Musk’s company attempted to catch both the rocket’s booster and upper stage.

During the first phase of the test flight on Friday, SpaceX failed to catch and recover the booster, instead diverting it to an offshore splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico where it exploded before hitting the water.

The rocket’s upper stage then continued into orbit and flew around the Earth 14 times before successfully landing on SpaceX’s launch tower, nicknamed Mechazilla.

The Hawaii Department of Transportation issued a temporary pause on some West Coast flights Friday, due to debris risk from the flight. Separately, the FAA issued a rare, nationwide ground stop due to telecommunications system failures. (Both of those orders have since been lifted.)

Making Starship a reliable and fully reusable rocket is critical to SpaceX’s ambitions. In the near term, the company needs Starship to send more satellites into orbit to expand its Starlink satellite internet service, which is currently the company’s profit center.

SpaceX is also expected to use Starship to bring astronauts and cargo from lunar orbit to the Moon’s surface and back for NASA. Musk also has a grand vision to use Starship to “colonize Mars” and “make humanity multi-planetary.”

During Test Flight 15 on Friday, SpaceX released another 26 of its newest Starlink v3 satellites into orbit, growing its commercial satellite internet network.

The company’s constellation already included over 11,000 satellites in low Earth orbit. One Starship rocket can carry up to 60 Starlink v3 satellites, the company has said.