By On Sunday, SpaceX launched its massive Starship rocket in its most daring test flight to date, using mechanical arms to catch the returning booster back at the pad.
Standing nearly 400 feet (121 meters) tall, the uncrewed Starship lifted off at sunrise from southern Texas, near the Mexican border, and followed a similar path over the Gulf of Mexico as its four predecessors, all of which were destroyed either shortly after launch or upon re-entry into the sea. The most recent attempt in June was the most successful, completing the flight without exploding.
This time, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk raised the stakes and took on more risk. The company successfully returned the first-stage booster to the launch pad just seven minutes after liftoff. The launch tower was equipped with enormous metal arms, nicknamed chopsticks, which caught the 232-foot (71-meter) descending booster.
“Are you kidding me?” exclaimed SpaceX’s Dan Huot, filled with excitement at the launch site. “I’m shaking right now.”
“This is a moment for the engineering history books,” added SpaceX’s Kate Tice from the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
The flight director had to make a real-time decision, using manual control, on whether to attempt the landing. SpaceX explained that both the booster and launch tower needed to be in stable condition for the catch. Otherwise, the booster would have ended up in the Gulf, as with previous attempts. Everything was deemed ready for the successful catch.
After separating from the booster, the sleek, retro-style stainless steel spacecraft continued its journey around the globe, aiming for a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The June flight fell short in its final phase after losing some parts. In response, SpaceX upgraded the software and revamped the heat shield, improving the thermal tiles.
For the past nine years, SpaceX has been recovering the first-stage boosters of its smaller Falcon 9 rockets after launching satellites and crews into orbit from Florida or California. However, these boosters land on floating platforms at sea or on concrete pads located miles from the launch site—not back on the pad itself.
Reusing Falcon boosters has accelerated SpaceX’s launch pace and saved the company millions of dollars. Musk plans to apply the same strategy to Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, featuring 33 methane-fueled engines on its booster. NASA has already contracted two Starships to land astronauts on the moon later this decade, and SpaceX envisions using Starship to transport people and supplies to the moon and, eventually, Mars.
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