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What’s Next for SpaceX’s Starship After Its First Ship Catch

SpaceX caught its Starship upper stage with launch tower arms in Texas on November 14, 22.5 hours after liftoff. The booster missed its own catch. Here is what the company still has to prove on reuse, launch rate and its giant satellite plans.

By Alistair Sterling

November 15, 20262 min read

What's Next for SpaceX's Starship After Its First Ship Catch — What’s Next for SpaceX’s Starship After Its First Ship Catch

SpaceX caught the upper stage of its Starship megarocket in the arms of its launch tower at Starbase, Texas, on Saturday, November 14, 22.5 hours after liftoff. It was the first time the company had ever attempted a Ship catch. What's next for SpaceX's Starship is proving it can fly the same hardware again, and fast.

The rocket launched on its 15th test flight on Friday, November 13. SpaceX wanted to bring both stages, the Super Heavy booster and the Ship upper stage, back to the pad to be grabbed by the tower's "chopstick" arms.

One catch, one splashdown

The booster did not make it. It diverted to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday evening after a low-fuel alarm.

Ship did. It settled into the tower's arms on Saturday afternoon in what the flight described as a soft, unprecedented embrace.

SpaceX has caught Super Heavy on three test flights. Ship is harder: it flies much higher and faster, so its return is far more involved.

"That was the holy grail of spaceflight, plummeting through fire to be snatched out of the air by steel," SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot said during the company's landing webcast. "We caught a Starship, and now everything changes."

Reuse is still unproven

The Flight 15 mission plan shows where SpaceX is heading. According to the company, a double catch will be standard on operational Starship missions, because it allows rapid inspection, refurbishment and reflight.

That rapid reflight has not been shown yet. SpaceX has reflown Super Heavy boosters twice. Booster 14 flew on Flight 7 in January 2025 and again on Flight 9 in May of that year. Booster 15 flew on Flight 8 and Flight 11, in March 2025 and October 2025.

Months separated each of those reflights. SpaceX has never reused a Ship, since it had not caught one until Saturday.

That could change soon. Before Flight 15, Elon Musk said the company wants to reuse both Starship stages, and that option may still be open for the Ship caught on Saturday.

The launch rate SpaceX wants

Musk has said SpaceX is targeting 10,000 Starship launches per year by 2030. That works out to more than one liftoff every hour on average.

The reason is size. SpaceX wants its next-generation Starlink V3 broadband network to reach 100,000 satellites. Its planned Starmind AI data-center constellation would be 10 times bigger, with one million spacecraft.

For comparison, the current Starlink network in low Earth orbit is about 11,000 satellites, the largest constellation ever assembled.

Most Starship launches over the next few years will likely go to building those constellations. The rocket is also meant to carry people to deep space, which will require more milestones. NASA has selected Ship to be the first crewed lunar lander.