Starship Flight 15 Hits Orbit, Drops 26 Starlinks, Booster Waves Off Catch

SpaceX lit the candle on Starship Flight 15 from Starbase late Friday afternoon, November 13. Ship 42 reached a roughly 275 km orbit on its second successful insertion ever and popped out all 26 Starlink V3 satellites about 40 minutes after liftoff.

The Super Heavy Booster 22 had other plans. After boostback it detected it wasn't in the right spot for a tower catch, aborted automatically, and headed for a contingency splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico where it went out in a fireball.

SHIP STILL LOOKING GOOD

Elon noted the green flame came from copper burning as residual fuel depleted and the engines ran oxygen-rich. Slight underperformance on this flight is already being fixed with Raptor 3.2 tweaks and a one-second earlier MECO software change. Next booster is nearly ready.

As of Saturday afternoon the ship was still healthy after multiple orbits and cleared for a return-to-launch-site attempt. Pad and tower are go. Catching an orbital upper stage with the chopsticks would be a first for any rocket.

Full telemetry review is underway, but the team says this loss doesn't slip the high-cadence fully reusable timeline.