SpaceX catches Starship with Mechazilla for the first time
At around 4:20 p.m. ET, Starship descended through clouds, flipped upright and settled between the arms of SpaceX’s Mechazilla tower. The catch marked the first time the company had successfully used the structure’s “chopstick” arms to recover the Starship vehicle itself.
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The milestone came after SpaceX aborted a planned catch of the Flight 15 booster. The booster later detonated over the Gulf of Mexico, and the company said it was still trying to determine what caused the landing attempt to be called off. SpaceX has caught boosters with the tower on earlier flights, but not Starship itself.
The vehicle catch did not mean the entire launch system was recovered. Still, it was a significant achievement for the Starship program. Before the flight, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call that “success is not guaranteed on these first flights, but I’d say it’s more likely than not that this succeeds next flight.”
SpaceX posted video of the maneuver on November 14, 2026, congratulating its team on the achievement.
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