SpaceX achieved another industry first on November 14, 2026, as it successfully recovered the upper stage of a Starship rocket.
While Elon Musk’s firm had so far managed to regularly recover the booster stages of the rockets it launches, this is the first time ever that the upper stage makes it safely to the ground after an orbital flight.
Recovering the upper stage is much harder than recovering the booster. The upper stage flies higher and much faster to reach orbit, and has to shed that speed on the way back, generating enormous amounts of heat during reentry.
This milestone opens the door to fully reusing Starship in future missions, potentially lowering the cost of access to space dramatically. NASA, for example, expects to use Starship for its return to the Moon, with a crewed landing planned for 2028 .
This particular Starship launched on November 13, 2026, on the Starship program’s 15th test flight and the fourth with its V3 version (and the second of them to reach orbit). After spending 22 and a half hours in orbit and deploying 26 Starlink satellites, it returned to Earth, landing at Starbase Texas, where the upper stage was caught by a pair of mechanical arms.
The Super Heavy booster stage of this same rocket was expected to be caught the same way, but it finally splashed down in the ocean due to a technical issue.
