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STARBASE, Texas — SpaceX launched the 15th test flight of its massive Starship rocket today (Nov. 13) and is preparing the vehicle’s upper stage for its first-ever return to the launch site in less than 24 hours.
Flight 15 took off from EspaceXThe Starbase facility here in south Texas at 5:47 p.m. ET (10:47 p.m. GMT; 4:47 p.m. Texas local time). The massive Super Heavy booster and ship’s upper stage cleared the tower without incident and rose into the sky under more than 18 million pounds of thrust from the booster’s 33 Raptor 3 engines.
The flight continued nominally until its initial ascent, with the successful execution of the Super Heavy’s main engine cutoff and subsequent warm-up of the Ship – firing its own Raptors during booster separation – approximately 2.5 minutes after launch. After the stages separated, the Super Heavy reoriented for a planned return to Starbase as the ship headed toward low earth orbit (LION).
Look on it
SpaceX originally planned to catch Super Heavy with the giant mechanical “wand” arms of the Starbase launch tower. But that was not to be: The company called off the capture attempt and lowered the booster for a controlled water landing in the Gulf of Mexico about 6.5 minutes after launch, for reasons that were not immediately clear.
A successful capture would have been an important milestone for SpaceX and its efforts to design Spacecraft as a fully and quickly reusable launcher. This would have been the first successful recovery of a Version 3 (V3) Super Heavywhich SpaceX began piloting earlier this year. The company previously recovered three of its V1 Super Heavy vehicles and reused two of them in subsequent flights.
The ship goes into orbit
The Ship’s Raptors continued firing after the stages separated, completing their first shot just eight minutes into the flight. Everything then went according to plan for the ship as well: a second engine burn lasting about 20 seconds parked the ship in LEO at an altitude of about 170 miles (275 kilometers) at T+26 minutes and 10 seconds.
“We have a nominal orbit insertion, so Starship is now orbiting Earth for the second time,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot said during today’s Flight 15 launch webcast. “It’s a really great time.”
The ship reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14launched on September 28.
The ship carried 26 SpaceX Starlink V3 spacecraft, which were deployed in LEO as planned today over a 42-minute period beginning 35 minutes after launch.
Improved Wireless Internet satellites are the second batch V3 to reach orbit, after a series of 26 which were delivered on Flight 14. The V3s are significantly more powerful than SpaceX’s Starlinks V2, which currently number more than 11,000 in LEO. The addition of this new set of V3s will add a terabit of data capacity to the constellation, according to SpaceX. Flight 15 Mission Overview. This is equivalent to the amount paid by 10 Star link V2 launches, carried out by SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
Three of the V3 Starlinks flying today were equipped with cameras to point toward the ship after deployment to analyze its heat shield tiles and other hardware after it rose to orbit. Their data will help SpaceX determine whether the ship can indeed return to Starbase on Saturday.
“Starship will only return to the launch site if the flight control team is satisfied that vehicle systems critical to re-entry maneuvers, final landing, and tower approach are healthy,” SpaceX wrote in its Flight 15 mission description.
SpaceX engineers will have ample time to examine the ship’s systems before making a final landing decision. The ship is expected to circle the Earth 14 times, spending more than 21 hours in space before returning home.
You can follow all the action here on Space.com via our Flight 15 Live Updates Page.
To catch or not to catch?
SpaceX has reserved three emergency checkpoints during the duration of Flight 15’s mission to allow for a rapid return to the Pacific Ocean, if engineers determine that a capture attempt is impractical or unwise. The first comes only 10 minutes after the completion of the deployment of the Starlink satellite, the second at T+7 hours and 15 minutes, and a last at T+20 hours and 41 minutes.
If the ship continues to look good at each of these milestones, SpaceX will conduct a 10-second deorbit at approximately T+21 hours and 36 minutes, placing the spacecraft on a return trajectory toward South Texas. His dive through Earth’s atmosphere will start approximately 35 minutes later. SpaceX has also designated an emergency landing zone in the Gulf of Mexico, if conditions prevent safe capture during the ship’s final approach.
If all goes as planned, the ship will return to Starbase on Saturday around 4:17 p.m. EST (9:17 p.m. GMT; 3:17 p.m. Texas time), approximately 22.5 hours after liftoff. A successful capture would be a major milestone for SpaceX: the first-ever recovery of a spacecraft upper stage.
Full reusability is at the heart of the company’s ambitions for the launch of its Starlink V3 satellites, as well as a proposed orbital data center constellation envisioned by the company’s founder and CEO. Elon Musk. The next-generation Starlink constellation will consist of around 100,000 satellites, while the AI network will be 10 times larger, Musk said. Building and maintaining these constellations will require a staggering number of launches. Indeed, SpaceX aims 10,000 Starship takeoffs per year by 2030according to Musk.
Some of Starship’s other planned missions won’t necessarily require full reuse, but the spacecraft’s reliability will be critical to NASA. Artemis Program and his efforts to bring astronauts back to the moon. The space agency selected Starship as one of the program’s crewed lunar landers, and it is expected to fly a demonstration mission with NASA. Orion spacecraft And Artemis III astronauts in Earth orbit in the summer of 2027.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 7:10 p.m. ET on November 13 with news of the successful deployment of the payload.
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