According to The Guardian, SpaceX's Starship megarocket blasted off from Texas on Friday afternoon, in a flight its headline describes as occurring before the expected return for reuse. The outlet reported that the aerospace company sought to make history with a double catch of its reusable rocket.

The Guardian's summary said Flight 15 is expected to orbit the Earth about 14 times over the course of 22 hours before the company catches the vehicle at Starbase, Texas. The report, written by Uwa Ede-Osifo, presents those figures as expectations, and the summary does not say whether the flight has met them.

The summary describes the mission in two parts, an extended orbital flight followed by a catch at Starbase. It names Texas as the state of the launch but does not identify a specific launch facility, and it offers no account of the vehicle's trajectory or of any events after liftoff.

The summary gives no timeline beyond the figures quoted above, and it does not state when the catch is scheduled to occur. Readers who want the complete account can consult the full Guardian report, which is credited to Uwa Ede-Osifo.

Because this account rests on a summary rather than the full Guardian article, it cannot confirm whether the launch proceeded as planned, whether the orbits were completed, or whether the catch took place. No other news report was available for comparison, so every fact here is attributed to The Guardian alone. Each figure in this report should therefore be read as the outlet's own description.

Sources: The Guardian: SpaceX Starship megarocket blasts off before expected return for reuse.