SpaceX Plans to Catch a Starship Ship With Starbase Chopsticks on Flight 14

On July 24, 2026, Starship Ship 40 settled vertically into the Indian Ocean after a suborbital test flight, and that soft splashdown is the reason SpaceX now thinks it can do something it has never tried before: catch the upper stage out of the sky with the mechanical arms at Starbase. The Next Web reported that the vehicle remained intact, giving engineers their first clear look at a surviving heat shield and proving the landing attitude was precise enough for the tower’s chopsticks. Elon Musk said on X the next day that, barring problems from the flight data review, SpaceX would attempt the ship catch on the next flight, Flight 14.

Catching the upper stage is a harder problem than catching the booster. SpaceX has already snagged the Super Heavy booster three times with the Starbase tower arms—first during Flight 5 on October 13, 2024, then Flight 7 on January 16, 2025, and again on Flight 8 on March 6, 2025, according to Tesla Oracle. The booster is roughly 230 feet tall and has hardpoints near its nose and mid-body where the chopsticks clamp on. The ship, at about 165 feet, has a different center of mass and aerodynamic profile, and it returns from much higher and faster.

The sequence SpaceX wants to prove starts after stage separation. The ship would execute a boost-back burn to head toward Starbase, survive reentry, then relight its Raptor engines for a landing flip and final landing burn. In Flight 13, all three Raptor engines relit, the vehicle flipped, and it came down vertically. Starlust noted that the precise vertical stance just above the water is exactly what the chopsticks need. That in-space engine relight is also a core capability for future orbital missions and for NASA’s Artemis III plans.

The Starbase catching hardware has evolved for this moment. A newer launch tower, Mechazilla, stands about 475 feet tall at Pad 2, reported Priority Sun Times. Its chopsticks were built shorter than earlier designs so they can swing faster, and SpaceX switched the main actuators from hydraulic to electro-mechanical to improve speed, redundancy, and reliability. Those changes matter because the arms must damp out oscillations while gripping the ship’s hardpoints, guided by cameras and telemetry.

Flight 13 also carried operational Starlink V3 satellites instead of the simulators flown on Flight 12, another sign the program is maturing. Gwynne Shotwell has said SpaceX wants to fly Starship monthly, with orbital flights targeted by the end of the year and Artemis III work following in 2027. If the ship catch works, the economics of Starship change. Landing legs add weight and refurbishment time; a vehicle returned straight to the tower can theoretically be refueled and reflown within hours, or at least days rather than months.

Flight 14 could fly before the end of August 2026, pending regulatory approval, according to The Next Web. The only real obstacle would be an anomaly in the Flight 13 data review. For now, SpaceX has a ship that landed cleanly, a tower rebuilt to catch it, and a public commitment to try.