Catch the Starship Upper Stage With ‘Chopsticks’

SpaceX finally broke out of a serious Starship slump on Tuesday, acing the rocket’s 10th flight after months of failed attemps. Now, CEO Elon Musk has set his sights on the next big challenge: catching Starship’s upper stage with Mechazilla’s “chopstick” arms.

In an X post on Wednesday, August 27, Musk said the next opportunities to attempt this feat would likely be flights 13 through 15, depending on how well V3—the next iteration of Starship—performs. The Starship launched Tuesday was a V2, which is slightly smaller and offers less payload capacity and thrust than the forthcoming V3. In another X post, Musk said he expects V3 to be built, tested, and perhaps flown by the end of the year.

Starship catch is probably flight 13 to 15, depending on how well V3 flights go

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 27, 2025

Why catch instead of land?

The Starship launch system consists of two main components: the ‘Super Heavy’ booster and an upper stage spacecraft called Starship. Both stages are designed for rapid reuse, meaning they need to return to Earth in one piece. That’s where Mechazilla comes in.

This massive launch tower at Starbase, Texas is equipped with giant chopstick-like arms designed to catch Super Heavy and Starship during their separate descents. This approach is better suited to Starship than soft landing on a droneship or landing pad like the Falcon 9. Starship is much larger, so it would require extra-big landing legs and extensive landing infrastructure to do that. The chopstick catch eliminates those needs and thus reduces weight.

Can SpaceX pull it off in four months?

SpaceX already caught Super Heavy on Flight 5 in October 2024, Flight 7 in January, and Flight 8 in March, but it has yet to attempt this with Starship. After the first successful booster catch, Musk said he hoped to catch Starship sometime in 2025, but the first half of the year didn’t exactly go as planned. A series of explosive failures during the first half of the year significantly delayed Starship’s launch schedule.

If Musk is targeting Flight 13 for a first attempt of the Starship catch, that means SpaceX would need to launch Flights 11 and 12 within the next four months to pull this off in 2025. It’s not an impossibility, but it’s more likely that the first Starship catch will take place sometime in 2026.

Still, Starship’s near-flawless performance during Flight 10 suggests SpaceX’s luck may be changing. The megarocket launched on time, followed by a smooth stage separation and booster landing—no catch attempt this time. Just over 18 minutes into the mission, it opened its bay doors and ejected payloads into space for the first time. That said, this megarocket still has a long way to go to get to Mars.