Analysis
SpaceX caught a Starship upper stage with its launch tower for the first time on Saturday, November 14, when the arms at Starbase pad 2 closed around Ship 42 at about 21:20 UTC, Drohnen.de reported from its live coverage, citing a SpaceX post that read "Mechazilla catches Starship!" The catch ended Flight 15. The flight lifted off from Starbase, Texas at 4:47 p.m. CST on Friday, November 13, spent 14 orbits in space and deployed 26 Version 3 Starlink satellites, according to Spaceflight Now, which called the return a key step toward full reusability.
The flight lasted about 22.5 hours from liftoff to catch, per Tesla Oracle. Elon Musk posted that "the epic day has arrived, thanks to the incredibly talented team at SpaceX," per Spaceflight Now.
What happened on Starship Flight 15
It was not the clean double catch SpaceX wanted. Super Heavy Booster 22 was meant to return to pad 2 about 6.5 minutes after liftoff. Instead an automated abort sent it offshore, and the booster exploded before reaching the water in the Gulf, Spaceflight Now reported. SpaceX commentator Dan Huot first described a guidance, navigation and control issue, then corrected himself: "It was not a GNC issue that caused us not to come back." Musk wrote that the booster was "slightly low on fuel," per Drohnen.de. Three earlier boosters have been caught by the tower, but the Version 3 Super Heavy has not yet made a successful return.
“Super Heavy Booster 22 was meant to return to pad 2 about 6.5 minutes after liftoff.”
The ship side had its own wrinkle. Ship 42 lit three Raptor engines for the landing burn; one shut off as it neared the tower and the other two cut off once it settled into the arms, after which the ship swayed like a pendulum for a few minutes, Tesla Oracle reported. The FAA issued the licence revision covering Flight 15 on November 13, hours before launch, per Drohnen.de.
How much is SpaceX worth?
According to Wikipedia's SpaceX entry, SpaceX priced its IPO on June 11, 2026 at $135 per share, a $1.77 trillion valuation, and raised $75 billion, which Wikipedia calls the largest IPO by proceeds on record. As Pulse reported on November 14, Reuters put SpaceX's market cap at about $1.90 trillion at the November 12 close, and Bloomberg reported $32 billion of revenue in the 12 months through September. That story also covered reported merger talks with Tesla that could produce an announcement as soon as December. Our SpaceX IPO page tracks the listing.
Value Add VC data
- Jan 2015, private round -- $1B at about $12B, from Google and Fidelity (Wikipedia)
- Jul 2017, private round -- $350M at $21B, lead not named (Wikipedia)
- Aug 2020, private round -- $1.9B, valuation to $46B, lead not named (Wikipedia)
- Feb 2021, private round -- $1.61B from 99 investors, valuation to about $74B (Wikipedia)
- Jun 2026, IPO -- $75B raised at $1.77T, $135 per share (Wikipedia)
The list omits later private marks, including a 2022 round that valued SpaceX at $127 billion and the February 2026 xAI merger that valued SpaceX at $1 trillion, per Wikipedia.
Launch market and SpaceX competitors
The global commercial satellite launch market was valued at $9.42 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $31.50 billion by 2034, a 14.36% annual growth rate, per Fortune Business Insights. SpaceX launched 165 Falcon 9 missions in 2025, and Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Blue Origin and ULA are the other companies eligible to compete with it for US national security missions, per Payload.
The caveat for investors is that a single catch is not a reusable fleet. SpaceX had not said whether or when Ship 42 will fly again, and the report on the booster abort was still pending as of November 14, per Drohnen.de. Starlink V3 at scale needs both stages back on the tower, flight after flight, and Flight 15 delivered only one of them.