On Saturday, SpaceX’s next-gen Starship spacecraft completed its 15th test flight, orbiting the Earth as it approached the conclusion of its mission, aiming for a historic landing back at its Texas launch site.

The uncrewed upper stage of Starship is set to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere following nearly a day in orbit, directing itself back to its launch tower before executing a controlled descent into the grasp of massive mechanical arms that are intended to capture the vehicle as it hovers over the launchpad.

Should this endeavor succeed, it would represent the first instance of a vertically launched spacecraft completing a round trip to orbit and returning to the exact location it departed from, fulfilling a crucial test in Elon Musk’s longstanding objective to create a fully reusable rocket system.

The towering two-stage rocket’s Super Heavy booster — the lower segment of the rocket — successfully propelled Starship into space on Friday, taking off from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas. However, the booster encountered a navigation problem about 10 minutes post-launch, preventing it from returning to the launch pad, which dashed SpaceX’s plans to recover both segments of the rocket for the first time.

Now flying at an altitude of approximately 260 kilometers, Starship is expected to complete 14 orbits around the Earth, with a total flight duration of 22 hours and 32 minutes.

This 15th Starship flight since 2023 has become the longest mission to date, surpassing the roughly three-hour duration of its 14th flight in September, which marked its inaugural orbital achievement.

SpaceX has dedicated around ten years to the development of Starship, which billionaire CEO Elon Musk envisions as a crucial vehicle for the company’s satellite operations and its aspirations to land humans on the Moon and eventually on Mars.

The company’s leadership in the global launch sector has primarily stemmed from its reliable Falcon 9 rocket, which has executed over 700 launches since 2010. While the first stage of this rocket is reusable, the second stage, responsible for delivering payloads into orbit, is discarded into the ocean after each mission.

Starship’s Super Heavy booster has successfully been recovered during three previous test flights utilizing the launch-tower catch system, with the latest successful catch occurring in March 2025. Since then, the company has not achieved such a landing, either opting to submerge it in Gulf waters or due to an onboard malfunction.