SpaceX’s attempt to catch both halves of Starship starts badly as the Super Heavy booster aborts into the Gulf of Mexico

A setback in the first minutes

SpaceX launched Starship towards orbit on Friday in what the South China Morning Post called its boldest test yet: a 22-hour flight that aimed to capture the entire rocket, in a move meant to speed up travel to the Moon and Mars.

The first half of the double catch failed. The Super Heavy booster malfunctioned and, instead of returning to its pad in Texas several minutes after lift-off, ended up in the Gulf of Mexico after an automatic abort, the Post reported.

The BBC had reported before launch that the 124-metre rocket was due to lift off from the Starbase launchpad at 16:45 local time (22:45 GMT) in a 75-minute window, and that the booster catch was planned six and a half minutes into the flight. SpaceX has caught the Super Heavy booster with the tower’s mechanical arms, nicknamed chopsticks, on three earlier test flights.

The plan for the Ship

The upper stage, called the Ship, was to continue to space and release 26 Starlink internet satellites, the BBC said. It was then due to complete 14 orbits of the Earth before returning for the second catch attempt about 22 and a half hours after take-off.

The Ship only reached orbit for the first time in September and has never been caught; on earlier flights it splashed down in the ocean. SpaceX said it would decide whether to try the catch only after carefully assessing the vehicle in space, and that there were several points in the flight at which it could be brought down in the ocean instead. The overnight reports did not say how the Ship was faring.

Why it matters

Reusing rockets is a long-held SpaceX goal. In 2015 its Falcon 9 booster became the first part of a rocket to land vertically, and Falcon 9 now flies more than a hundred times a year, which has sharply cut launch costs, the BBC noted.

“A successful double catch would be visually spectacular, but full reusability has the potential to fundamentally change the economics of accessing space.”

Prof Malcolm Macdonald, Royal Aeronautical Society, BBC News World(translated)

Nasa is watching closely. SpaceX holds a contract to turn the Ship into a lander for Nasa’s Artemis programme, which aims to put astronauts on the Moon in 2028, and Artemis III is planned for summer 2027. Its rival Blue Origin has delayed its return to flight to early 2027 after a rocket explosion destroyed its Florida launchpad. Nasa’s administrator, Jared Isaacman, has said the US is in a race with China, which plans a crewed landing by 2030.