SpaceX’s Mechazilla launch tower caught the 171 foot Starship Ship 42 upper stage with its mechanical arms at Starbase in South Texas on Saturday at 4:20 p.m. Eastern time, completing the first tower recovery of a Starship spacecraft returning from orbit. Following a deorbit burn and atmospheric reentry over the Pacific Ocean, northern Mexico and southern Texas, the spacecraft descended belly first over Pad 2 before igniting its Raptor engines to flip vertical and settle into the tower’s arms roughly 22.5 hours after liftoff. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman called the catch “almost magic.”

The catch concluded Starship’s 15th test flight, which launched Friday, circled Earth 14 times at an altitude of about 275 kilometers and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites adding up to 26 terabits per second of network capacity, equivalent to roughly 10 Falcon 9 launches of Starlink V2 Mini satellites. While SpaceX had previously caught three Super Heavy boosters at the launch tower, recovering the orbital upper stage clears a central hurdle toward making the entire rocket reusable.

SpaceX had planned to catch both stages during the mission, which came 46 days after Flight 14, but aborted the return of Super Heavy Booster 22 minutes after Friday’s liftoff and diverted it to a splashdown and explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk attributed the booster loss to slight engine underperformance that depleted fuel in the regenerative cooling circuit, adding that SpaceX will cut off the main engines about one second earlier on future flights and remains on schedule for high volume reusable launches.