SpaceX caught Starship from orbit with ‘robot chopsticks’ in a world 1st — but lost its booster in the Gulf of Mexico. What it means for the stock

After about 22.5 hours and 14 orbits, Starship returned to SpaceX’s Starbase site in Texas, and the tower’s mechanical arms plucked it out of the air. “Mechazilla catches Starship!” SpaceX posted. It was the first catch of a spacecraft returning from orbit.

Hours after the catch, Musk reshared his Aug. 30, 2021, post calling the tower arms “robot chopsticks,” which warned that “success is not guaranteed, but excitement is!” On Flight 15, he got half of each. The rocket’s Super Heavy booster, which was supposed to be caught the same way, was diverted and exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX has caught three earlier versions of the booster, the first in October 2024, but this was the first attempt with its newest design.

SpaceX shares closed at $139.11 on Nov. 13, about 3% above the $135 IPO price, then slipped about 2% in after-hours trading as the booster was lost. Nov. 16 is the market’s first chance to react to the catch. The next test comes Dec. 8, when the last batch of insider shares from the IPO lockup can be sold.

What actually happened in Texas

Starship Flight 15 lifted off at 5:47 p.m. ET on Nov. 13 from Starbase, with the booster’s 33 Raptor engines producing more than 18 million pounds of thrust. It was SpaceX’s first attempt to catch both stages of the rocket, with the booster due back minutes after launch and the ship, known as Ship 42, the following afternoon.

The booster’s guidance system decided it wasn’t lined up for a tower catch and sent it toward the Gulf instead.

Ship 42 kept climbing into orbit, which Starship first reached on the previous flight, on Sept. 28. About 35 minutes after liftoff, it began releasing 26 Starlink V3 satellites, a batch SpaceX says adds roughly 10 times the downlink capacity of a Falcon 9 Starlink launch. Three of the satellites carried cameras to photograph the ship’s heat shield, which SpaceX checked before committing to bring it home. The ship then circled Earth about 14 times.

Musk and SpaceX engineers were inspecting the ship within hours. “I hugged ship 42 upon its return,” he posted, along with videos showing it “looks great!”

The ship’s condition matters because SpaceX wants to fly it again. A reusable rocket is supposed to make launches far cheaper, and cheaper launches mean more Starlink satellites. SpaceX told CNN it aims to reliably reuse Starship by NASA’s Artemis IV moon mission, slated for 2028, though NASA hasn’t decided whether Starship or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon will land that crew.

SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share on June 11, and the stock opened at $150 the next day. Since then it has traded as high as $225.64 and as low as $104.83.

Before the flight, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas called a successful catch one of the most significant potential catalysts in SpaceX’s history.

You may think you own a rocket company

In the third quarter, SpaceX reported revenue of $14.58 billion, up 161% from a year earlier and well above the $12.72 billion analysts expected. Net income was $4.4 billion, helped by about $1 billion of other income and a $390 million tax benefit. Income from operations was $2.8 billion.

Its AI business, which the company calls “Super Intelligence,” brought in $7.56 billion, topping the $5.25 billion from Connectivity, the segment that includes Starlink, for the first time. The Space segment, home to Starship, lost $7 million as research spending on the rocket rose.

AI is also where the money is going. It took $16.4 billion of SpaceX’s $19.6 billion in third-quarter capital spending, and CFO Bret Johnsen said fourth-quarter capex will be $35 billion to $40 billion, roughly double.