SpaceX achieved a significant milestone in its ongoing Starship program with a remarkable test flight on Sunday, successfully catching the returning booster at the launch pad using giant mechanical arms.
Elon Musk, the company’s CEO and founder, celebrated the success, describing the event as “science fiction without the fiction part.”
The towering Starship, nearly 400 feet tall, launched at sunrise from Texas near the Mexican border. After liftoff, it followed a path over the Gulf of Mexico, unlike previous Starship tests that ended in destruction either shortly after launch or during ocean landings. The most recent flight in June was deemed the most successful until this latest test.
This time, Musk set a higher bar, aiming to demonstrate the rocket’s capability to transport humans back to the moon and eventually to Mars. At the flight director’s command, the first-stage booster made its way back to the launch pad, landing successfully seven minutes after launch. The launch tower’s massive arms, known as “chopsticks,” expertly caught the descending booster, securing it high above the ground.
“The tower has caught the rocket!!” Musk declared on social media. He emphasized that this was a significant step toward making life multi-planetary.
SpaceX employees erupted in celebration, and NASA also congratulated the team, with Administrator Bill Nelson acknowledging the importance of this achievement for the Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the moon’s south pole, following the legacy of the Apollo missions.
“This is a day for the engineering history books,” stated SpaceX engineering manager Kate Tice.
Company spokesman Dan Huot expressed his excitement, saying, “Even in this day and age, what we just saw is magic,” feeling the adrenaline from the successful operation.
The flight director exercised real-time decision-making, determining the safety of the booster and launch tower conditions for landing. The retro-styled spacecraft launched by the booster soared over 130 miles into the atmosphere before splashing down successfully in the Indian Ocean, capturing another achievement for the day.
Huot remarked, “What a day. Let’s get ready for the next one.”
Following some prior setbacks, SpaceX has made software upgrades and improved the thermal shielding for the Starship program.
The company has been recovering its smaller Falcon 9 rocket boosters for nearly a decade, successfully landing them on ocean platforms or solid ground away from the launch site. In contrast, the successful catch of the Starship booster marks a new level of efficiency.
Musk reported that the captured booster appeared to be in excellent condition with minimal warping, which can be fixed easily. NASA has ordered two Starships for lunar missions later this decade, while SpaceX plans to utilize Starship for missions to both the moon and Mars.