First-stage booster explodes after liftoff, ending double-catch bid

SpaceX’s Starship made its return to Earth on Saturday, caught in midair by the giant mechanical arms of the launch tower at the pad where its journey had begun 22 hours earlier. It was the first-ever capture of a Starship flying back from space, and the finale Elon Musk and his team had hoped for.

The company fell short of its desired double catch. The first-stage booster exploded shortly after Friday’s liftoff from Texas, and its wreckage remained in the Gulf of Mexico, cordoned off by buoys. The stainless steel, bullet-shaped upper stage lowered itself upright at the launch pad instead, and cameras panned the spacecraft as it hung high above the ground, supported by the tower’s arms.

“Can you believe it?” SpaceX commentator Dan Huot shouted, dragging out each word. “Look at her! Baby, she’s back!”

SpaceX officials said Saturday’s catch demonstrates the full reusability of Starship, which is intended for moon and Mars travel. Although Friday’s booster recovery failed, the company had already made three previous booster catches, validating the technique.

The world’s largest and most powerful rocket, a 407-foot (124-meter) behemoth, blasted off late Friday afternoon from SpaceX’s Starship base near the U.S.-Mexican border. The upper-stage spacecraft separated neatly from its booster before things went awry, soared into orbit and released 26 advanced Starlink satellites. Starship then circled the world 165 miles (265 kilometers) up, with live views of itself and Earth streaming down via Starlink, completing 14 laps around Earth — outshining the previous mission’s one to two laps.

The flight was SpaceX’s 15th of a full-scale Starship since 2023 and only its second trip to orbit. SpaceX reported that everything on the spacecraft, including its vital heat shield, appeared to work well.

On the booster, SpaceX’s Kate Tice said its engines stopped firing too soon on the way back down. The booster’s guidance system sensed it was not in the right position and automatically initiated the watery detour and self-destruction. Engineers are still investigating the cause.

NASA welcomed Saturday’s news. The space agency is paying billions of dollars for Starship to land Artemis astronauts on the moon later this decade and help build a permanent lunar base. Musk’s ambitions are grander: he wants to launch a fleet of Starships to build a city on Mars.

“It was almost magic,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said via X. “Making more believers by the day … one step closer to (emojis of the moon and the U.S. flag).”

SpaceX expects to begin launching Starships from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center within the next few months. That is the starting point for NASA’s next Artemis mission, which will skip the moon and remain in orbit around Earth for lunar lander practice. Artemis III’s four astronauts will attempt to dock their capsule with not only Starship but Blue Origin’s Blue Moon, and the two companies will take turns delivering crews to the lunar surface.

NASA is targeting as soon as 2028 for Artemis IV, humanity’s first moon landing since the Apollo era more than half a century ago.