LIVE: Starship reaches orbit and drops 26 Starlinks; first ship catch attempt tonight
Live, updated: Saturday 14 November 2026, 12:20 Europe/Amsterdam. Ship 42 is in orbit and coasting. The first attempt to catch a Starship upper stage is planned for about 22:17 Europe/Amsterdam tonight.
What's happened: SpaceX launched Starship Flight 15 from Starbase, Texas, at 5:47pm ET on Friday 13 November 2026 (22:47 UTC, 23:47 Europe/Amsterdam). The flight was the first attempt to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the Ship upper stage with the launch tower's arms. Ship 42 reached an orbit of about 275 km, only the second time a Starship has done so after Flight 14 on 28 September, and deployed all 26 Starlink V3 satellites. Each V3 satellite is intended to add 1 terabit of capacity, and SpaceX says the batch equals about 10 Starlink V2 Mini launches on Falcon 9. Ship 42 is now on a roughly 14-orbit coast.
Bandwidth to orbit: Starlink said the payload will add up to 26 terabits of capacity to the constellation, and Elon Musk added that future Starship flights will carry more than 50 Tb/s of Starlink bandwidth to orbit. SpaceX has said a single Starship can carry up to 60 V3 satellites, about 20 times the capacity of earlier Falcon 9 launches, according to CNBC. SpaceX also released footage of the deployment, shared on X by Marcus House.
The booster: SpaceX called off the catch of Super Heavy V3 booster B22 for reasons it has not stated and diverted it to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, where it exploded, according to Spaceflight Now and CNBC. Space.com described the descent as a controlled splashdown, and SpaceX commentator Dan Huot said teams would "dig in to what caused that abort." No V3 Super Heavy has been recovered yet. Three V1 boosters were caught on earlier flights, and two of those were reflown.
What's next: If the flight control team confirms that the systems needed for reentry, the landing burn and the tower approach are healthy, SpaceX plans to attempt the first return to the launch site and tower catch of a Starship upper stage at about 21:17 UTC (22:17 Europe/Amsterdam) on Saturday 14 November, roughly 22.5 hours after liftoff. Contingency ocean splashdowns are available if it is not. Catching both stages would have marked the first full recovery of an orbital launch system. With the booster lost, a successful ship catch tonight would still be the first recovery of a Starship upper stage.
Sources: Space.com
SpaceNews
Spaceflight Now
CNBC
SpaceX Flight 15
Starlink on X, 13 November
Elon Musk on X, 14 November
