SpaceX launched its enormous Starship rocket on Sunday, conducting its boldest test flight yet, with the booster being caught by mechanical arms upon its return to the pad.
Standing at 121 meters tall, the Super Heavy booster attached to the Starship rocket blasted off at sunrise from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. It then made a controlled return to the pad, where a pair of huge mechanical "chopsticks," named "Mechazilla" by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, extended from the launch tower to catch the slowly descending booster.
The lift-off occurred at 7:25 a.m. local time in clear weather. While the booster returned to the launchpad, the upper stage of Starship was expected to splash down in the Indian Ocean within the hour.
In its last flight in June, SpaceX achieved its first successful Starship splashdown, a key milestone for Musk's vision of one day sending humans to Mars. Starship, first unveiled by Musk in 2017, had previously exploded several times during earlier stages of testing.
As Starship reentered Earth's atmosphere horizontally, onboard cameras captured a pinkish-purple hue of superhot plasma enveloping the ship's Earth-facing side and its two steering flaps, with hypersonic friction creating a glowing aura.
The ship's heat-exposed side is coated with 18,000 heat-shielding tiles, which have been improved since June, when tile damage during reentry complicated the test.
NASA is also closely watching developments, as a modified version of Starship is expected to serve as a lander vehicle for crewed missions to the moon under its Artemis program later this decade.
SpaceX stated its engineers have "spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success."
Teams monitored to ensure that "thousands" of criteria were met on both the vehicle and the tower before attempting to catch the returning Super Heavy booster.
Had conditions not been favorable, the booster would have been redirected for a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, as with previous tests.
However, after receiving the green light, the booster decelerated from supersonic speeds, and the "chopstick arms" successfully caught it.
This catch-landing method represents the latest achievement in SpaceX's development of a fully reusable rocket, designed to carry more cargo into orbit, ferry humans to the moon for NASA, and eventually reach Mars.
(With input from AP, AFP, Reuters)
(Cover: A screenshot of the livestream of Starship's fifth test flight, October 13, 2024. /SpaceX)