Newshot SpaceX's Starship Achieves First "Chopstick Catch" of the Ship, but Full Reusability Still Faces Multiple Challenges
IT Home, November 15 news: According to a Space.com report, SpaceX's Starship made history today, but there are still many hurdles to overcome before this giant rocket can truly achieve full, routine operations.
On Friday, November 13 local time, Starship conducted its 15th test flight, with the goal of accomplishing an unprecedented feat: bringing both components of the rocket — the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft — back to the launch tower at Starbase in Texas, and having them caught directly by the two mechanical arms on the tower, commonly known as the "chopsticks."
In the end, the Super Heavy booster failed to complete this task. On Friday evening, due to a low-fuel alarm, the booster changed its original recovery plan and instead landed in the Gulf of Mexico.
However, the Starship spacecraft successfully completed its return mission. On the afternoon of Saturday, November 14 local time, 22.5 hours after liftoff, it landed smoothly into the arms of the launch tower's mechanical arms, completing an aerial capture never before achieved.
To date, SpaceX has successfully caught the Super Heavy booster with the mechanical arms in three previous test flights, but it had never successfully captured the Starship spacecraft; in fact, before Saturday, the company had never even attempted this operation.
Capturing the Starship spacecraft is more difficult and riskier. Compared with the Super Heavy booster, the spacecraft returns at a higher altitude and faster speed, making the entire return process far more complex.
Therefore, Saturday was undoubtedly a milestone day for SpaceX.
IT Home notes that SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot (Dan Huot) said during Saturday's landing livestream: "This is the ultimate goal in spaceflight: to fall through the flames at high speed and ultimately be caught steadily in midair by steel mechanical arms. We have successfully caught a Starship, and from now on, everything will change."
The mission plan for the 15th test flight also gave the public an early look at Starship's future operating model. According to SpaceX's vision, once officially in operation, both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft will be recovered via mechanical-arm capture. This way, the rocket can be quickly inspected, repaired, and refurbished, and then flown again.
And SpaceX does indeed hope to achieve extremely high-frequency repeat launches. Elon 马斯克 (Elon Musk) has said that the company plans to achieve the goal of 10,000 Starship launches per year by 2030, averaging more than one launch per hour.
Why is such a staggering launch frequency needed? Because the giant satellite constellations SpaceX plans to build will be far larger than any system currently in Earth orbit.
For example, the company hopes its next-generation Starlink V3 broadband network can have 100,000 satellites. And its planned Starmind AI space data center constellation is 10 times larger still, with plans to deploy 1 million spacecraft.
For reference, SpaceX's current operational Starlink network has about 11,000 satellites deployed in low Earth orbit (LEO), and that is already the largest satellite constellation humanity has built to date.
Recovery Is Only the First Step; Starship Must Also Prove It Can Be Rapidly Reused
Of course, rocket recovery is only part of achieving reusability. After recovery, inspection, repair, and relaunch still need to be completed.
This is precisely where SpaceX still has a great deal of work to do: to date, the company has not proven that both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft can achieve rapid repeat launches.
SpaceX has previously reused the Super Heavy booster twice.
Among them, the booster designated B14 first flew the 7th test flight mission in January 2025, and then launched again on the 9th test flight in May of the same year.
The booster designated B15 carried out the 8th and 11th test flights, with launch times in March 2025 and October 2025, respectively.
However, these boosters were separated by several months between their two flights. As for the Starship spacecraft, SpaceX had never reused any of them before, because it was not until Saturday that the company first successfully captured the spacecraft during a test flight mission.
This situation may soon change. Before the launch of the 15th test flight, 马斯克 said that SpaceX hopes to reuse both components of Starship. Under this plan, the spacecraft successfully recovered this time may still carry out flight missions again in the future.
In the long run, it is expected that subsequent Starship test flights will place increasing emphasis on full reusability. SpaceX needs to continuously shorten the interval between rocket recovery, inspection, refurbishment, and relaunch, gradually moving toward the goal of one launch per hour — provided, of course, that this goal can ultimately be achieved.
In the coming years, most Starship launches may be used to build the two giant satellite constellations, Starlink V3 and Starmind.
However, if everything goes according to plan, Starship will also undertake crewed deep-space exploration missions. To achieve this goal, SpaceX must also solve another series of technical challenges.
Crewed Lunar Landing in 2028 Still Faces Two Major Technical Hurdles
NASA has already selected the Starship spacecraft as the first crewed lunar lander for the Artemis program. The program aims to establish a base near the lunar south pole by about 2032.
Under the current arrangement, Starship will first carry astronauts to land near the lunar south pole on the Artemis 4 mission, which is planned for 2028.
To achieve this goal, SpaceX needs to install a crew cabin and life support systems on the Starship spacecraft. NASA says the company is currently advancing this work and has already made considerable progress.
A NASA report released last month showed that SpaceX is expected to complete the construction of "Cabin 1" by the end of this year as planned. This is a full-scale ground prototype of the Starship crew cabin, used to validate the relevant design and technology.
However, Starship still needs to overcome another hurdle.
In all deep-space missions, Starship will need to be refueled after launch through a dedicated fuel depot in Earth orbit. This depot will be built by SpaceX.
The reason is simple: if Starship carried all the fuel needed for a deep-space mission at launch, the rocket would become extremely heavy and struggle to complete the mission.
The fuel depot will be resupplied by specially designed Starship tanker spacecraft.
It is currently unclear exactly how many tanker spacecraft will be needed to go to orbit to resupply each Starship deep-space mission. External experts have cited numbers as high as 22, while 马斯克 previously estimated 6 to 8.
Regardless of how many refuelings are ultimately needed, Starship must prove it has the capability to complete refueling beyond Earth orbit, and this technology has not yet been actually verified.
Moreover, orbital refueling is not just a matter of having two spacecraft dock in space.
Starship's engines use liquid oxygen and liquid methane as propellants, so both propellants must be kept at extremely low temperatures throughout the refueling process. This means SpaceX also needs to solve a series of complex problems such as the storage and transfer of cryogenic propellants in the space environment.
Given the tight schedule, SpaceX will likely conduct its first orbital refueling test before long.
If the company cannot get Starship ready in time to carry out the crewed lunar landing mission of Artemis 4 in 2028, NASA may turn to another commercial space company's lunar lander — Blue Origin's Blue Moon. NASA has previously signed Artemis program-related mission contracts with Blue Origin as well.
Overall, the 15th test flight is undoubtedly a major victory for Starship and SpaceX, but there is still a great deal of work to do before truly achieving full reusability, rapid launch, and crewed deep-space exploration.
In the coming weeks and even months, whether SpaceX can further advance key technologies such as booster reuse, Starship reflight, and orbital refueling in space will be a focus worthy of outside attention.
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