ORLANDO, Fla. — SpaceX is nearly ready to bring Starship to Florida, but launched one more mission from Texas on Friday, one that had plans to try to recover the Super Heavy booster and the upper stage for the first time. The booster, though, didn’t make the planned return.

Starship’s Flight 15 test mission lifted off from SpaceX’s Texas site Starbase at 5:47 p.m. EST. But the booster diverted for a controlled landing over the Gulf of Mexico instead of attempting a capture by the launch tower. All 33 engines worked on the way up, though, with uncertain reasons why the launch tower capture was aborted. SpaceX had managed successful tower captures on three previous missions.

The upper stage, though, made it to space and SpaceX still has a chance to capture it for the first time.

Despite a nationwide grounding of all flights Friday afternoon by the FAA, SpaceX continued to prep for launch with propellant loading of 12 million pounds of liquid oxygen and liquid methane beginning about an hour before liftoff.

It marks the second time SpaceX pulled off an orbital launch with previous test missions having been suborbital. All previous flights also had brought the Starship upper stage down in the water, but this latest test flight will try for the first time to have it captured by a tower at the launch site.

That will come nearly a full day after launch. The recovery method would be similar to how the Super Heavy booster recovery was planned, hovering adjacent the launch tower with two swiveling arms called “chopsticks” closing in on it for the capture.

The upper Starship stage aims to orbit the Earth 14 times over 22 hours.

“Similar to Starship’s first orbital mission, the flight profile has been designed with the opportunity to insert into a passively safe suborbital trajectory or safely deorbit at multiple pre-determined areas over the ocean after raising to an orbital altitude,” SpaceX posted on its website.

While on orbit, Starship’s upper stage will deploy 26 of the larger Starlink V3 satellites for its growing broadband internet constellation. Three of the satellites have a suite of cameras tacked on to scan Starship’s heat shield.

“Starship will only execute a return to launch site if the flight control team has ensured that the vehicle systems critical for reentry maneuvers and final landing burn and tower approach are healthy,” the company stated.

This could be the final test flight before operational missions from Kennedy Space Center, the company has stated.

“It’ll be ready a little later this month,” said SpaceX commentator Jessie Anderson on Friday, saying the initial launch will be in the “very near future.”

It has been preparing the first of three Starship launch towers located on the Space Coast at KSC’s Launch Complex 39-A adjacent the pad it uses for Falcon Heavy launches.

The next two Starship launch towers will be at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 37, with the first mission to fly from there targeting mid-2027.

Elon Musk expects weekly launches from among its active sites by next year, with Florida’s first launch site along with Texas to start. Down the road, SpaceX looks to bring a massive Starship launch site online in Louisiana.

SpaceX along with Blue Origin need to have their Florida launch sites up and running by next summer when NASA attempts its Artemis III mission. That flight will feature launches of three rockets: SpaceX’s Starship, a Blue Origin New Glenn flying a test version of its Blue Moon lunar lander, and NASA’s Space Launch System rocket with four crew in the Orion spacecraft.

The mission calls for Orion to remain in low-Earth orbit, then dock with Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander as well as a lunar lander version of SpaceX’s Starship. That will pave the way for a 2028 mission that will use one of the two landers to bring humans back to lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.

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