SpaceX catches a Starship upper stage for the first time

SpaceX's Flight 15 page says the Starbase tower arms caught the Starship upper stage on Nov. 14, 2026, for the first time, about 22 hours 32 minutes after liftoff, and that all 26 deployed Starlink V3 satellites had made contact and were raising their orbits. Space.com timed the catch at about 4:20 p.m. EST. The page says the booster's boostback ended early because of low fuel mass, the root cause is under investigation, and the flight termination system triggered after the landing burn shut down while the booster hovered over the Gulf; the flight-timeline table still lists a booster catch at 6 minutes 35 seconds, while CNBC says the booster exploded before it hit the water.