SpaceX made its most daring test flight yet Starship rocket on Sunday, capturing the lap booster launch platform with mechanical arms.
At nearly 400 feet (121 meters), the empty spaceship took off after dark on the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. It arced over the Gulf of Mexico like the four Starships before it he was devastatedshortly after takeoff or during discharge into the sea. The last one in June was the most successful yet, completing its flight without exploding.
This time, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk stepped up the challenge and risk. The company returned the first stage booster to the pad from which it had ascended seven minutes earlier. The launch tower had huge metal arms, called sticks, that caught the thruster 232 feet (71 meters) down.
“The tower has caught the rocket!!” Musk said via X.
Company personnel screamed with joy as the booster slowly descended into the arms of the launch tower.
“Even today, what we just saw is magic,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot said near the launch site. “I’m shaking right now.”
“My friends, this is a day for the engineering history books,” added SpaceX’s Kate Tice from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
It was up to the flight director, with real-time manual control, to decide whether or not to attempt a landing. SpaceX said that both the booster and the launch tower should be in good condition and stable. Otherwise, it would have ended up in the gulf like the previous ones. They judged that everything was up for grabs.
The retro-looking stainless steel vessel on top continued around the world once without a booster, headed for a controlled splash in the Indian Ocean, where it would safely sink. The entire flight was expected to last just over an hour.
June’s flight was cut short after parts came out at the end. SpaceX upgraded the software and upgraded the heat shield, improving the thermal pads.
SpaceX has been recovering the first-stage boosters of its smaller Falcon 9 rockets for nine years after carrying satellites and crews into orbit from Florida or California. But they land on floating ocean platforms or concrete slabs several kilometers from their launches, not on them.
Recycling Falcon boosters has sped up the launch rate and saved SpaceX millions. Musk wants to do the same with Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built with 33 methane-fueled engines in the booster alone. NASA has ordered two spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon by the end of this decade. SpaceX wants to use Starship to send people and supplies to the moon and eventually to Mars.
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