SpaceX pulled off its boldest test flight yet of the enormous Starship rocket on Sunday, catching the returning booster back at the launch pad with metal ‘chopsticks’ – marking another milestone on Elon Musk’s quest to get humanity to Mars.
The 400-foot spacecraft blasted off at sunrise from close to the Mexico border before successfully landing on a pad with mechanical arms for the first time.
It arced over the Gulf of Mexico like the four Starships before it that ended up being destroyed, either soon after liftoff or while ditching into the sea. The last one in June was the most successful yet, completing its flight without exploding.
‘Even in this day and age, what we just saw is magic,’ Dan Huot observed from close to the launch site after the booster touched down. ‘I am shaking right now.’
‘The tower has caught the rocket!!’ SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said via X as the spacecraft made the dramatic touchdown.
Company employees screamed with joy as the booster slowly lowered itself into the launch tower’s arms.
‘Folks, this is a day for the engineering history books,’ added Kate Tice from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
SpaceX brought the first-stage booster back to land at the pad from which it had soared seven minutes earlier.
The launch tower sported monstrous metal arms, dubbed chopsticks, that caught the descending 232-foot (71-meter) booster.
It was up to the flight director to decide, in real time with a manual control, whether to attempt the landing.
SpaceX said both the booster and launch tower had to be in good, stable condition. Otherwise, it was going to end up in the gulf like the previous ones.
Everything was judged to be ready for the catch.
The retro-looking stainless steel spacecraft on top continued around the world once free of the booster, targeting a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean, where it would sink to the bottom.
The entire flight was expected to last just over an hour.
The June flight came up short at the end after pieces came off. SpaceX upgraded the software and reworked the heat shield, improving the thermal tiles.
SpaceX has been recovering the first-stage boosters of its smaller Falcon 9 rockets for nine years, after delivering satellites and crews to orbit from Florida or California.
But they land on floating ocean platforms or on concrete slabs several miles from their launch pads – not on them.
Recycling Falcon boosters has sped up the launch rate and saved SpaceX millions. Musk intends to do the same for Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built with 33 methane-fuel engines on the booster alone.
NASA has ordered two Starships to land astronauts on the moon later this decade.
SpaceX intends to use Starship to send people and supplies to the moon and, eventually Mars.