SpaceX’s Starship Flight 15 launches from Orbital Launch Pad 2 at Starbase Boca Chica, Texas, on November 13, 2026.
Ricardo Arduengo | AFP | Getty Images
During a key test flight on Friday, EspaceX tried but failed to recover both stages of its massive Starship rocket.
The rocket lifted off from the company’s launch facility in south Texas at 4:47 p.m. local time, or 5:47 p.m. ET. SpaceX had to abandon its plan to recover and reuse the propellant, diverting it to project it into the Gulf of Mexico, where it caught fire.
Test Flight 15, the most ambitious Starship mission to date, was the first time Elon Musk’s company attempted to catch both the booster and the upper stage, or spacecraft part, of the massive rocket.
Earlier Friday, SpaceX received authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration. Hours later, the FAA conducted a nationwide ground check after reporting communications problems affecting “multiple” air traffic control centers. The SpaceX license was not affected by the flight shutdown, an FAA spokesperson told CNBC.
The Starship’s upper stage continued its trajectory into orbit after the company failed to catch and recover the booster. The rocket is expected to circle the Earth fourteen times in total. If successful, SpaceX will land the upper stage at its Starbase facilities on Saturday.
Starship’s success is critical to SpaceX and its ambitions to ultimately transport cargo and people to the surface of the Moon and Mars. In the short term, SpaceX needs to send more satellites into orbit to expand its Starlink satellite internet service, which is currently the company’s profit center.
The company’s constellation already includes more than 11,000 active satellites in low Earth orbit. A Starship rocket has the capacity to carry up to 60 Starlink v3 satellites into orbit, the company said, which is about 20 times the capacity of previous Falcon 9 rockets.
SpaceX’s Starship Flight 15 booster explodes after launch from Orbital Launch Pad 2 at Starbase Boca Chica, Texas, on November 13, 2026.
Ricardo Arduengo | AFP | Getty Images
In Starship’s previous test flight, the company launched 26 v3 satellites, and another 26 during Friday’s test flight, with the goal of “Starlink becoming 51% of the Internet,” SpaceX said in an article on X.
When it comes to launches, “SpaceX is likely a decade ahead of its peers on this front,” William Blair analysts wrote in a note published Friday. “Even if tonight’s capture fails, a delay of a few months isn’t that big of a deal.”
Meanwhile, SpaceX faces new criticism over restrictions on its Starshield satellite internet service in Ukraine. Starshield is built on Starlink technology and is SpaceX’s military-grade satellite internet service.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country’s military forces had once again encountered limitations on Starshield without warning, hurting their ability to defend against ongoing Russian air attacks. Similar limits on Starshield in Ukraine were temporarily imposed last month.
Some US senators have condemned the restrictions and urged Congress to investigate SpaceX.
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