SpaceX successfully “caught” the first-stage booster of its Starship megarocket using giant metal arms as it returned to the launch pad after a test flight, a first in the company’s quest to build reusable a moon and Mars vehicle.
The rocket’s Super Heavy first stage booster lifted off at 7.25am (1.25pm Irish time) from SpaceX’s launch facilities in Boca Chica, Texas, sending the Starship second stage rocket toward space before separating at an altitude of roughly 70km to begin its return to land.
The Super Heavy booster re-lit three of its 33 Raptor engines to slow its speedy descent back to SpaceX’s launch site, as it targeted the launch tower it had blasted off from.
With its engines roaring, the 71 metre-tall booster fell into two metal arms fitted to the tower, hooking itself in place by its four forward grid fins it used to steer itself through the air.
“The tower has caught the rocket!!” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X afterwards.
The novel catch-landing method is the latest advance in SpaceX’s test-to-failure development campaign for a fully reusable rocket designed to loft more cargo into orbit, ferry humans to the moon for NASA and eventually reach Mars – the ultimate destination envisioned by Mr Musk.
The US Federal Aviation Administration approved SpaceX’s launch license for the Starship test, following weeks of tension between the company and its regulator over the pace of launch approvals and fines related to SpaceX’s workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9.
Starship, first unveiled by Mr Musk in 2017, has exploded several times in various stages of testing on past flights, but successfully completed a full flight in June for the first time.
The two-stage rocket’s Super Heavy booster lifted off from Texas sending the second stage Starship on a near-orbital path bound for the Indian Ocean some 90 minutes later, acing a fiery hypersonic reentry