The ship came back to the tower.

STARBASE, Texas — The Starship upper stage came back to the tower on Saturday. Reuters reported that the ship returned from a 22-hour voyage and, for the first time, descended into the mechanical arms of the tower it had left a day earlier. Saturday morning this paper said the catch was still ahead. That sentence is no longer true.

The ship is 171 feet, 52 meters. It fell out of thick clouds over Starbase, reignited its engines, flipped vertical, and came down into the arms the company calls Mechazilla. The engines were still roaring. The ship was charred. They shut down. It hung still. Reuters called it the longest mission of the system.

Ship 42 looks great!

The upper stage completed 14 orbits of the Earth in 22.5 hours. On Friday night it deployed 26 Starlink satellites at about 161 miles, 260 kilometers. On Saturday it fired an engine and began the plunge from about 17,000 miles an hour. The fins folded. Two small fittings near the top hooked the tower arms. The ship hung a few hundred feet off the ground.

The booster did not make the same return. Reuters said that failure came about 10 minutes after liftoff, so both stages were not recovered. This desk is not calling that a blast. Reuters did not.

Elon Musk wrote on X, and Reuters quoted him: “Ship 42 looks great!” He posted photographs and video from the tower. He and engineers inspected the ship within hours.

The photograph is the approach, Saturday, Nov. 14, 2026. The ship is still above the tower. The engines are firing. The arms are open. It is not the moment the ship hung still, and it is not Friday’s launch. Eric Gay, AP.