Starship Flight 15: Booster Diverts to the Gulf, Ship Reaches Orbit, Catch Attempt Still Ahead

Updated as of 01:00 UTC on November 14, 2026: Starship Flight 15 is still in flight, and its biggest test is still ahead. SpaceX's Starship lifted off from Starbase, Texas at 22:47:36 UTC on Friday, November 13 (the time Launch Library 2 records). The Super Heavy booster did not come back to the tower: "Super Heavy has diverted to an offshore splashdown in the Gulf," SpaceX posted. The ship carried on. SpaceX posted that it "enters orbit of Earth for the second time" and that "All 26 Starlink V3 satellites are in orbit." It is now on a long coast around Earth. SpaceX plans to bring it back to Starbase for the first attempt to catch a Starship upper stage, at about 21:20 UTC on November 14 (SpaceX's timeline lists the catch at T+22:32:34), and only if the ship's systems are healthy. That attempt has not happened yet, and its outcome is not known at the time of writing.

This is SpaceNexus analysis of the flight so far. The flight's own page is our Flight 15 launch page. The plan as it stood before launch is in our Flight 15 preview, and the last flight in What Flight 14 Changes.

What happened, in SpaceX's words

The times below are when SpaceX posted each update on X, not exact event times. All times are UTC: the first seven posts are from November 13, the last two from November 14.

• 22:48: SpaceX posted its liftoff announcement. Launch Library 2 records liftoff at 22:47:36.
• 22:51: hot staging. SpaceX posted that Starship's Raptor engines "have ignited, and the Super Heavy is boosting back towards Starbase for a catch."
• 22:55: "Super Heavy has diverted to an offshore splashdown in the Gulf."
• 22:57: "Starship's ascent burn is complete. Starship is now on a planned suborbital trajectory as teams check systems to confirm we are good to proceed to orbit today."
• 23:11: go for orbit. "Starship will soon perform a short burn with a single Raptor engine to enter an ~275 km orbit of Earth."
• 23:15: "Starship performs its orbital insertion burn and enters orbit of Earth for the second time."
• 23:27: "Starship is now deploying its payload of 26 Starlink V3 satellites. This deployment sequence will take ~42 minutes."
• 00:06 (November 14): "Payload deploy complete. All 26 Starlink V3 satellites are in orbit."
• 00:08: "Starship is now in a long coast phase around Earth. Teams will monitor Starship's systems over the next ~21 hours that we intend to be in orbit for. We do have a few early deorbit options available should we need them, but all systems are looking good right now."

That last post was still SpaceX's most recent on Flight 15 when we checked again at 00:59 UTC.

On the launch webcast, SpaceX's Dan Huot said: "We've got a nominal orbit insertion, so Starship now in orbit around Earth for the second time ever," Space.com reported. Flight controllers then decided to forgo an "early return" option to land the ship with an ocean splashdown off the coast of Hawaii, Space.com's live blog reported, and Huot said: "That means this is now going to be the longest Starship mission we've ever flown." SpaceX has not posted about that return check itself.

Launch day, the license and the date

SpaceX posted at 21:43 UTC that it was "On track for Starship's 15th flight," with a 75-minute launch window opening at 4:45 p.m. CT, which Launch Library 2 lists as 22:45 UTC. SpaceX posted no scrub, hold or delay. At five minutes before launch, Huot said: "We have no holds on the board right now," Space.com reported. Liftoff came 2 minutes 36 seconds into the window (our arithmetic).

The Federal Aviation Administration issued revision 10.0 of Starship's launch license, VOL 23-129, on launch day, November 13, effective the same day. The revision applies to a single launch of Flight 15 and adds, for the mission profile in SpaceX's application, a water landing in the Gulf of America and a return to SpaceX's Boca Chica launch site. Launch Library 2's update log reads, at 19:25 UTC: "License granted. Go for launch." NASASpaceflight wrote that "The FAA left it late."

On our launch page, Flight 15's target changed four times, with no slips: from a fourth-quarter placeholder to November 2026 (seen October 28), firmed to November 13 (seen November 5), set to 22:45 UTC (seen November 7), and moved to 22:47 UTC on launch day. Every change is in our launch slip explorer.

What is still ahead: the first ship catch attempt

The catch is planned for about 21:20 UTC on Saturday, November 14 (about 3:20 p.m. in Texas). SpaceX's timeline, marked "All Times Approximate," lists the landing burn shutdown and catch at T+22:32:34, which from the 22:47:36 UTC liftoff is about 21:20 UTC by our arithmetic. It is a plan, and it depends on the ship passing SpaceX's health checks.

The steps before it, from SpaceX's timeline (time after liftoff): a final Hawaii return check at T+20:41:55, the deorbit burn from T+21:35:57, Starship entry at T+22:10:46 and the landing burn from T+22:32:16. By our arithmetic those are about 19:30, 20:24, 20:58 and 21:20 UTC on November 14.

SpaceX has set conditions for the return. "Starship will only execute a return to launch site if the flight control team has ensured that the vehicle systems critical for reentry maneuvers and final landing burn and tower approach are healthy," its mission page says, and controllers will permit it only if the ship meets SpaceX's "internally developed, and FAA-approved, conditions for a return to launch site and catch." If the ship does come home, SpaceX says:

• it will "carry out a series of small turns in its trajectory to intentionally fly over sparsely populated areas of northern Mexico and southern Texas";
• "residents of Cameron County and those in the nearby area may hear one or more sonic booms as Starship approaches the launch site";
• over Starbase, "it will perform the final bellyflop maneuver down towards the tower at Pad 2."

SpaceX has also planned other endings. It lists precleared splashdown areas around Hawaii and several hundred kilometers off the coast of Chile, which "were also used during Flight 14," and "a late-reentry option to send Starship into the Gulf of America if any of its systems or the tower itself encounter an issue after reentry that would preclude a safe catch at Starbase." (Analysis: a splashdown instead of a catch would be one of the outcomes SpaceX planned for, not a departure from the plan.)

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman posted at 23:39 UTC on November 13: "Tomorrow is a big day for the community, with a Vulcan launch and Starship's return on deck."

What is new compared with Flight 14

• A second orbit. Ship first reached orbit on Flight 14, which launched on September 28, Space.com notes, and SpaceX's 23:15 UTC post says Starship entered orbit "for the second time." SpaceX describes Flight 14 as "sending Starship to orbit and deploying meaningful payloads to space for the first time." (Analysis: two orbital flights in a row, each with a working payload, begin to look like a pattern rather than a one-off.)
• A planned ship catch. "On Flight 15, Starship will attempt its first ever return to launch site. On previous flights, Starship ended its mission with a splashdown in the ocean," SpaceX says. Before liftoff, SpaceX posted at 22:13 UTC: "On this mission, we will attempt to recover both stages of Starship for the first time." (Analysis: with the booster in the Gulf, recovering both stages is no longer possible on this flight. The ship's return is still planned.)
• The long coast. SpaceX's plan is about 14 orbits at an altitude of about 275 km, "over the course of a more than 22-hour flight." Flight 14, planned to last 10 hours, ended after roughly three, Reuters reported. Huot said on the webcast: "We're going to surpass the point that we had to come home on Flight 14," according to Space.com's live blog. (Analysis: if the ship flies the full profile, SpaceX gets its longest look yet at how a ship's systems behave in orbit over time.)
• Heat shield changes. SpaceX says the heat shield carries the improvements made on Flight 14, "including additional retention mechanisms on tiles in areas deemed to be at highest risk of falling off during ascent," and that "a large portion of the heatshield" is "equipped with a curved tile design that has shown the ability to reduce heating in the gaps between tiles." Three of the satellites "have been modified with a suite of cameras to scan Starship's heatshield and transmit imagery down to operators." One tile has its own story: SpaceX posted at 22:26 UTC that the tile MrBeast installed "flies to space."
• A booster catch attempt. "This will be the first return and catch attempt for a Super Heavy V3 booster," SpaceX said before launch. "Three V1 boosters were successfully caught on earlier flight tests with two demonstrating successful reflights." The last tower catch was in March 2025, Reuters noted. Our catch record has every return.

What it did not show, and what is not known

• No booster catch, and no reason yet. SpaceX's posts give no reason for the divert, and do not say whether the booster's landing burn ran, how many engines lit or whether the booster survived. Space.com reported that SpaceX "called off the catch attempt," for reasons that "were not immediately clear." SpaceX's only words on the cause so far came on the webcast, where Huot said: "We'll dig in to what caused that abort during its flight back to the tower," according to Space.com's live blog.
• Press reports of an explosion. AP reported that the booster "fell into the Gulf of Mexico in flames," and Reuters that it "momentarily hovered in the air before exploding a short distance over the sea surface." SpaceX's posts do not describe the booster's end. When we read the FAA's statements page at about 00:50 UTC, it had no statement on Flight 15.
• The satellites' health. SpaceX said all 26 are in orbit. It has not said they have made contact with the ground or are healthy. Its mission page says that after deployment the satellites "will unfold their antennas and deploy their solar arrays and make initial contact with the ground," and should begin serving customers "as soon as a few weeks after launch."
• The ship's return. Reentry and the catch attempt have not happened. SpaceX's 00:08 UTC post, "all systems are looking good right now," is its most recent word.
• No propellant transfer. SpaceX's Flight 15 page does not list one. SpaceX has said orbital missions starting with Flight 14 would "conduct new flight tests like the first orbital propellant transfer," without assigning that test to Flight 15.
• The next flight. SpaceX has said nothing about Flight 16 in its posts or on the Flight 15 page.
• The vehicles' names. A SpaceX post on November 13 names the ship, Ship 42. SpaceX's Flight 15 posts do not name the booster; NASASpaceflight and Space.com call it Booster 22.

Why it matters

Reuse. Before launch, SpaceX's mission page said that if both stages came back for catch, "this will mark the first full recovery of an orbital launch system and a breakthrough moment in making Starship a reliable, rapidly reusable rocket." That will not happen on this flight, but the ship's half is still ahead: SpaceX lists "the first return to launch site and catch at Starbase" among the ship's primary objectives, and says "Recovering an entire orbital launch system has never been done, and Starship has always been designed to change that." (Analysis: a ship coming back from orbit to the tower is the half of reuse Starship has not yet shown. If it works, full recovery would then need a ship catch and a booster catch on the same flight. SpaceX has caught a booster three times before, all of them earlier V1 boosters.)

The Artemis lander path. Starship is "slated to fly a demonstration mission with NASA's Orion spacecraft and Artemis III astronauts to Earth orbit in the summer of 2027," Space.com notes, and NASA has helped fund Starship's development with roughly $3.2 billion since selecting it in 2021, Reuters reported. Isaacman posted after the launch: "We are looking forward to some of that on-orbit Starlink capability on Artemis III." (Analysis: NASA's plans for Starship depend on it flying to orbit reliably, and a second orbital flight in a row is a step in that direction. Flight 15 does not test the orbital propellant transfer SpaceX has said is coming.) Our Flight 14 analysis sets out the lander plan.

Starlink capacity, as SpaceX claims it. "Each Starlink V3 satellite will add 1 Terabit of capacity to the constellation, with all 26 satellites equaling ~10 Starlink V2 Mini launches on Falcon 9," SpaceX says, and it posted at 22:38 UTC that the flight furthers "our goal of Starlink becoming 51% of the internet." These are SpaceX's figures and goals. The satellites still have to finish their checkout; SpaceX says they should begin serving customers "as soon as a few weeks after launch." (Analysis: on SpaceX's figures, one Starship flight of V3 satellites adds the capacity of about ten Falcon 9 launches, which is why the flight rate matters as much as any single flight.)

Nothing in this article is a view on SpaceX shares or any other security.

Next on our trackers: the ship's return and catch attempt on our Flight 15 launch page, every catch and splashdown on the catch record, and the full flight history on the Starship tracker.

Sources

All accessed November 14, 2026, between about 00:40 and 01:00 UTC.

• SpaceX on X, Flight 15 posts (UTC): Ship 42 to the pad, November 13, 00:56; on track, 21:43; recovering both stages, 22:13; heat-shield tile, 22:26; 26 Starlink V3 satellites, 22:38; liftoff, 22:48; hot staging, 22:51; booster divert, 22:55; ascent complete, 22:57; go for orbit, 23:11; orbital insertion, 23:15; deployment begins, 23:27; deployment complete, November 14, 00:06; long coast, 00:08
• SpaceX: "Starship Flight 15" mission page (pre-flight text and flight timeline; not yet updated after launch when read)
• SpaceX: "Returning Starship to the Launch Site" update and "Starship to Orbit" update
• Launch Library 2: Starship Flight 15 record (liftoff 22:47:36 UTC; update log; status "Payload Deployed" when read again at about 01:08 UTC, last updated 01:07 UTC)
• FAA: Starship-Super Heavy license VOL 23-129, Revision 10.0 (issued and effective November 13, 2026) and FAA: general statements (read at about 00:50 UTC; no Flight 15 statement)
• Space.com: "SpaceX launches Starship on ambitious 22-hour Flight 15 test, but aborts booster 'chopsticks' catch (video)" (Josh Dinner, updated 7:10 p.m. ET, November 13, 2026)
• Space.com: Flight 15 live updates (Mike Wall, Josh Dinner and Tariq Malik, November 13, 2026)
• AP: report on Starship Flight 15 (updated 4:20 p.m. PST, November 13, 2026)
• Reuters: report on Starship Flight 15 (Joey Roulette, November 13, 2026)
• NASASpaceflight: "Starship Flight 15: Ship 42 orbital, Booster diverts to ocean" (Ryan Weber)
• Spaceflight Now: Flight 15 live coverage (pre-launch text, November 13, 2026)
• NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman on X (November 13, 2026, 23:39 UTC)
• SpaceNexus: the Flight 15 launch page and its date history (read at about 00:50 UTC), the Starship catch record and the Starship tracker