SpaceX aborts Starship booster's tower catch after Flight 15 guidance problem
SpaceX says the booster for Starship Flight 15 was called off from its attempted chopsticks tower catch after launch because of a guidance issue, according to a company video.
SpaceX has called off an attempt to catch the booster from its Starship Flight 15 mission using the tower's mechanical arms, citing a guidance issue that arose after launch. The company described the abort in a video it published, offering a rare public look at a landing attempt that did not go as planned.
The attempt concerned the so-called chopsticks landing method, in which the booster is guided back toward a launch tower and caught by a pair of arms rather than returning to the ocean for a splashdown. Starship is SpaceX's large reusable launch vehicle, and recovering its first-stage booster intact is central to the company's goal of rapidly reusing hardware. Catching the booster on the tower is designed to cut refurbishment time and cost compared with retrieving it from the water, which is why the abort matters beyond a single flight.
SpaceX attributed the abort to a guidance issue, the system responsible for steering the booster along its return path. The material available for this report does not establish what caused that problem, and the company's account in the video did not extend beyond the basic description. The timing is also specific: the problem surfaced after launch, while the booster was still on its way back toward the tower, leaving little room for a recovery attempt once the abort was called.
The episode highlights how demanding the tower catch remains. Each flight gives engineers data on the booster's behavior during descent and on the precision needed to meet the arms at the right moment. Whether the abort will lead to changes in the guidance approach for future attempts has not been stated in the material reviewed for this report.
What happened to the booster after the call to abort is not clear from the available information. It is not established whether the stage was recovered or lost, and the outcome of the ship itself on Flight 15 is not covered in the material reviewed here. Those details, along with any findings SpaceX releases on the guidance failure, will determine how the flight is ultimately assessed.
The report on the abort comes from Space.com, where Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik covered the video and SpaceX's account of the flight. Further updates from SpaceX on the cause of the guidance problem, and on the fate of the booster, would clarify what happened after the decision to stop the catch.
Source: space.com
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