Flight 4 Splashed Down. Flight 5's Company Record Says the Tower Caught the Booster.

A splashdown and a catch are different endings for the booster. SpaceX’s own flight narratives, read from the company’s mission records on October 21, 2026, are the text below. This pass opened Flight 4 and Flight 5. It did not open an FAA license for either flight. Later flights that already have pages on this site stay on those pages.

The vehicle is Starship. The site is Starbase.

What’s confirmed

Flight 4, as the company record prints it

The mission record for Starship’s Fourth Flight Test, read from SpaceX’s content API, says the flight launched with the goal of going farther than any previous test and of beginning to demonstrate return and reuse. It says the payload was the data.

It says that on June 6, 2024, Starship lifted off at 7:50 a.m. CT from Starbase in Texas. It says Super Heavy completed a full-duration ascent burn. It says Starship executed a hot-stage separation, powering down all but three of Super Heavy’s Raptor engines and igniting six second-stage Raptor engines before the vehicles separated. It says the booster completed a flip, a boostback burn, and jettison of the hot-stage adapter.

It says the booster’s flight ended with a landing burn and a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico seven minutes and 24 seconds into the flight.

It says the ship’s six engines placed it on the planned coast. It says the ship made a controlled reentry, through peak heating and max aerodynamic pressure, and controlled the descent with its flaps at hypersonic speeds. It says Flight 4 ended with the ship igniting its three center Raptor engines, a flip, and a landing burn, “followed by a soft splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean one hour and six minutes after launch.”

Label: The company narrative. 7:50 a.m. CT and June 6, 2024, are in that text. The booster ending is a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The ship’s ending is a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean. “One hour and six minutes” is the ship’s clock in that narrative. Seven minutes and 24 seconds is the booster’s. This page does not call either one a catch. The record lists a webcast of type x.com with video id 1798098040588480826. This desk did not open that video.

Flight 5: the catch, as the company record prints it

The mission record for Starship’s Fifth Flight Test, read the same way, says the fifth flight test lifted off on October 13, 2024. It does not print an hour for that liftoff.

It says: “And on our first try, Mechazilla caught the booster.”

The next paragraph says that after liftoff, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and coast, Super Heavy performed its landing burn “and was caught by the chopstick arms of the launch and catch tower at Starbase.” It says thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria had to be met before the catch attempt, “and thanks to the tireless work of SpaceX engineers, we succeeded with catch on our first attempt.”

It says that before the catch, Starship executed a hot-staging separation, ignited its six Raptor engines, and completed ascent into outer space. It says the ship coasted to the other side of the planet, reentered, passed through peak heating and maximum aerodynamic pressure, then did a flip, a landing burn, and a splashdown “at its target area in the Indian Ocean.” It says the flight test concluded at splashdown 1 hour, 5 minutes and 40 seconds after launch.

Label: The company narrative. October 13, 2024, is the date it prints. “First try,” “Mechazilla,” and “chopstick arms” are its words. A liftoff clock is not in the paragraphs this desk read. The 1 hour, 5 minutes and 40 seconds is the ship’s splashdown, measured from launch. It is not the booster’s flight time. The record lists a webcast of type x.com with video id 1845152255944819015. This desk did not open that video. The public launch URL returned a script shell, not the sentences. The sentences are from the content API.

What this pass did not open

Flights 1, 2, 3, and 6 through 13 were not re-read from the company API on this pass. Flight 9 remains the update note. Flight 14 is described on the Flight 15 page from SpaceX’s post-flight page, as that page recorded it on October 19, 2026. Flight 15 was still a target then. Ship 40’s return is the October 13, 2026 post about a flown ship back in a Megabay. It is not Flight 5.

No FAA license, mishap report, or permit was the file opened for Flight 4 or Flight 5. The programmatic study of up to 456 launches a year is an October 2026 notice about a future cadence. It is not a license for these two tests.

A Reuters account that prints a liftoff clock for Flight 5 was not opened. This page does not supply the hour the company narrative omits.

Claims and open questions

“On our first try” and “we succeeded with catch on our first attempt” are the Flight 5 narrative’s sentences about the booster. The same narrative’s ship still ends in a splashdown. A caught booster and a splashed-down ship are both in that text.

Flight 4’s “soft splashdown” of the booster is not Flight 5’s catch. The Gulf of Mexico in the Flight 4 text and the Indian Ocean in both texts are the places those narratives name. They were not averaged into one recovery.

“Thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria” is the company’s phrase. The narrative does not list them.

On the map

Starship is the vehicle page. The design numbers there are not these flight narratives. Starbase is the site. Flight 15 is still the pre-launch note. The company is SpaceX.

Sources

Checked October 21, 2026.