SpaceX just pulled off the wildest Starship flight yet — and lost the booster in a fireball doing it.

Starship Flight 15 roared off the pad at Starbase, Texas, at 5:48 p.m. ET on Friday, Nov. 13, in the company’s boldest test yet: a planned first-ever “double catch” of both stages of the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket.

It was half a triumph — and half a heartbreak.

The Super Heavy booster was supposed to fly back to the launch tower and be plucked out of the air by its mechanical arms, just as SpaceX has done three times before. Instead, the catch was aborted for unspecified reasons. The booster was diverted offshore and exploded in flames over the Gulf of Mexico about 6½ minutes after liftoff, before it hit the water.

“Well, that certainly isn’t the news that we had hoped to hear for today,” SpaceX launch commentator Kate Tice said on the broadcast.

But the story didn’t end there. The Starship upper stage kept going — and reached orbit for only the second time. Shortly after reaching orbit, it deployed 26 of SpaceX’s most advanced Starlink V3 satellites.

SpaceX has not said what triggered the abort.

And the biggest moment may still be coming — today.

The ship itself is scheduled to make its own return-to-pad catch attempt on Saturday, Nov. 14, at about 4:20 p.m. ET, roughly 22½ hours after launch. It would be the first time Starship has ever tried to return to the pad from orbit. The plan calls for the ship to complete 15 laps around the world at an altitude of about 170 miles before heading back to Starbase for the grand finale.

If it sticks the landing, SpaceX will have proven it can recover the whole rocket — the key to the fast, reusable launches Elon Musk says are needed for moon bases and Mars missions.

If it doesn’t, well — Friday already showed how fast a triumph can turn into a fireball.

Stay tuned. This one isn’t over yet.

Sources: AP via Phys.org and Spaceflight Now.

Photo: Osunpokeh, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).