SpaceX It launched its massive Starship rocket on Sunday in its most audacious flight test yet, trapping the booster as it returned to the pad with mechanical arms.
Nearly 400 feet (121 meters) tall, Starship lifted off at dawn from the southern tip of Texas near the border with Mexico. It arced over the Gulf of Mexico, like the four previous Starships before being destroyed shortly after takeoff or sunk in the sea. The last one, in June, was the most successful to date, completing the flight without exploding.
On this occasion, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, Elon Muskincreased the challenge and risk. The company landed the first stage booster on the platform from which it took off seven minutes earlier. The launch tower had monstrous metal arms, known as chopsticks, that trapped the 71-meter (232-foot) booster as it descended.
“The tower has trapped the rocket!” Musk posted on X.
Company employees shouted with joy as the booster slowly dropped into the arms of the launch tower.
“Even in this day and age, what we just saw is magic.”said Dan Huot of SpaceX near the launch site. “I’m shaking right now.”
“People, this is a day that will go down in the engineering history books,” SpaceX’s Kate Tice added from the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
The decision, made in real time and with a control manual, to attempt the landing depended on the flight director. SpaceX said both the booster and the launch tower had to be in optimal and stable condition. If not, he would end up in the gulf like the previous ones. Everything was considered ready to catch him.
The retro-looking stainless steel spacecraft on top continued its course around the world once detached from the booster, aiming for a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean where it would sink to the bottom. The entire flight was anticipated to last just over an hour.
The June flight came close to finishing after pieces fell off. SpaceX improved the software and modified the heat shield, improving the thermal plates.
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 platforms in the ocean or concrete slabs several kilometers (miles) from their launch pads, not on them.
Recycling Falcon boosters has accelerated the pace of launches and saved SpaceX millions of dollars. Musk intends to do the same with Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket built with 33 methane combustion engines in the booster alone. The POT has called for two Starships to take astronauts to the moon this decade. SpaceX intends to use the Starship to send people and supplies to the moon and, eventually, Mars.