FACTS
SpaceX’s Starship Flight 15 lifted off from Starbase, Texas, at 5:47 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, Nov. 13, and its upper stage reached orbit, but the company called off a planned tower catch of the Super Heavy booster and sent it into the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship upper stage deployed 26 Starlink satellites and is scheduled to attempt the first tower catch of a Starship upper stage at Starbase on Saturday, Nov. 14.
What happened to the Super Heavy booster
SpaceX had planned to catch both stages of the rocket with the “chopstick” arms on its launch tower. Instead, the company posted that “Super Heavy has diverted to an offshore splashdown in the Gulf,” according to Interesting Engineering. The booster is powered by 33 Raptor 3 engines that produce more than 18 million pounds of thrust, Space.com reported.
Outlets described the booster’s end differently. Space.com reported a controlled splashdown about 6.5 minutes after launch. The Associated Press reported that the booster “fell into the Gulf of Mexico and exploded.” Aerospace Global News, which identified the vehicle as Booster 22, reported that it “erupted in flames on reaching the water.”
SpaceX did not give a reason for calling off the catch. “Not sure right now why we weren’t able to bring it back,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot said during the company’s broadcast, according to AFP, in a report carried by Gulf News. “Well, that certainly isn’t the news that we had hoped to hear for today,” SpaceX launch commentator Kate Tice said, according to the AP. Gizmodo reported that SpaceX did not yet know the cause of the abort.
Starship Flight 15 upper stage reaches orbit
The upper stage, called Ship, reached low Earth orbit at about 170 miles (275 kilometers) roughly 26 minutes after launch, Space.com reported. “We’ve got a nominal orbit insertion, so Starship now in orbit around Earth for the second time ever,” Huot said, according to Space.com. Starship’s previous flight, on Sept. 28, was the first time Ship reached orbit, Space.com reported.
Ship then deployed 26 of SpaceX’s V3 Starlink satellites over about 42 minutes, beginning about 35 minutes after launch, according to Space.com. Aerospace Global News reported that three of the satellites carry cameras to photograph the ship’s heatshield.
About seven hours into the mission, SpaceX said, “Starship and its heatshield are healthy as the vehicle continues to orbit Earth,” AFP reported. “We’re not tracking any issues right now with the vehicle,” Huot said, according to AFP.
The planned upper stage catch
Ship is scheduled to return to Starbase at about 4:17 p.m. ET on Saturday, about 22.5 hours after liftoff, Space.com reported. The return will happen only if engineers confirm that critical systems are healthy, with a final contingency checkpoint planned at 20 hours and 41 minutes into the flight and a 10-second deorbit burn at about 21 hours and 36 minutes, according to Space.com.
“We’ll only go for it if the ship passes all of these system checks,” Tice said, according to AFP. AFP reported that SpaceX has contingency plans to shorten the flight and splash the ship down in the Pacific Ocean if needed.
The AP described the planned catch of both stages as unprecedented. Ahead of the launch, Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX’s vice president of launch, said, “Starship, we’re going to catch both the first stage and second stage,” according to the AP. The FAA gave its final approval for the flight a few hours before liftoff, the AP reported.
Reactions to the flight
Clayton Swope of the Center for Strategic and International Studies called the mission a “mixed bag so far,” AFP reported. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman praised “another spectacular launch,” according to AFP, which noted that he did not mention the booster.
More coverage is in the Stay Current News Science section.
