Starship: booster catch called off on Flight 15
· BehindLines newsroom
On 13 November, SpaceX flew the fifteenth test of its Starship rocket from Starbase, Texas, but gave up on catching the first stage with the launch tower's mechanical arms. According to the BBC and Space.com, the second stage kept going toward orbit.
A first stage diverted to the sea
The goal was a "double catch": first the Super Heavy booster, then the upper vehicle, called Ship. According to the BBC, the booster was sent to the ocean instead of returning to the tower, and it caught fire as it came down. Space.com describes a booster that came down under control about 6.5 minutes after liftoff, in the Gulf of Mexico, with the reasons not yet clear at the time. A SpaceX spokesperson said, according to the BBC, that safety remained the top priority and that the company was still testing maneuvers it had never done before.
Space.com notes that a success would have been the first time a version 3 Super Heavy was recovered. The BBC recalls that SpaceX had already caught the booster on three earlier flights.
The ship in orbit with 26 satellites
According to Space.com, the Ship reached low Earth orbit at an altitude of about 275 kilometers, for only the second time after Flight 14 in September. It deployed 26 third-generation Starlink satellites. Three of them carry cameras to observe the vehicle's heat shield, to help engineers decide on a return.
The Ship is to make 14 orbits of the Earth and come back to the tower about 22.5 hours after liftoff, that is on Saturday 14 November. According to the BBC, no upper stage has ever been caught: so far, each one has ended its run in the ocean. SpaceX has planned several checkpoints at which it can choose a return to sea, and will attempt the catch only if critical systems are judged healthy, Space.com reports.
Why it matters
Full reuse of the rocket is SpaceX's stated ambition for cutting costs. Malcolm Macdonald, president of the Royal Aeronautical Society, quoted by the BBC, says full reusability could fundamentally change the economics of getting to space, but that a single successful flight would not be enough to prove it. The program is also closely watched by NASA, which has given SpaceX the job of adapting the Ship into a lunar lander. At the time of writing, the outcome of the Ship's return is not known.