SpaceX catches returning rocket in mid-air, turning a fanciful idea into reality

On Sunday, SpaceX achieved a remarkable technical achievement when it launched the fifth test flight of its massive Starship rocket and, seven minutes later, mechanically captured the booster back at the launch pad in Texas.

This is a first for the industry and a critical step toward SpaceX’s goal of quickly reusing the Starship rocket, facilitating human missions to the Moon and Mars, routinely accessing space for enormous payloads, and developing new capabilities that no other company or nation appears to be able to achieve.

Launching from SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in South Texas, a few miles north of the US-Mexico border, the 398-foot-tall (121.3-meter) Starship rocket made a thunderous first splash at 7:25 am CDT (12:25 UTC) to begin the test flight. 33 Raptor engines were fired by the rocket’s Super Heavy booster stage, producing almost 17 million pounds of thrust and consuming 20 tons of liquid oxygen and methane propellants per second at maximum power.

NASA’s Saturn V rocket, which launched men to the moon more than 50 years ago, has twice the power of this one.

Following a steep climb from its shoreline launch pad, the Starship shot into an easterly arc across the Gulf of Mexico. The rocket’s speed reached almost 3,300 mph (5,300 km/h) as all 33 engines fired for over 2.5 hours, but they eventually shut off when the Starship upper stage fired six more Raptor engines to continue the rocket’s ascent into space.

The Super Heavy booster was the center of attention for most observers, whether they were watching SpaceX’s live webcast or were present at the launch, even though Starship executed a seemingly flawless engine firing to accelerate itself to nearly orbital velocity.

The rocket used its engines to change direction and head back toward the Texas coast while it was high over the Gulf of Mexico. The Super Heavy booster made a supersonic descent after peaking at 59 miles (96 kilometers) above the ground, then fired up its 13 engines one last time for a braking burn. After that, the rocket reduced its power to just three engines in order to perform the precise maneuvers needed to hover over the launch pad. Booms of sound crackled across the mud flats.

That was when the rocket was caught in the two “chopsticks,” or weight-bearing mechanical arms, of the launch pad’s tower, also known as Mechazilla. The booster was suspended maybe 200 feet above the ground when the engines cut off.

SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot commented on the company’s webcast of the test flight, saying, “That’s the first ever booster catch, a major step on the way to rapid reusability.”.

The Super Heavy booster was directed toward a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, not far off the coast of Texas, during SpaceX’s previous four Starship test flights. SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability, Bill Gerstenmaier, said that although the boosters on the first three flights failed to reach the water, on the fourth mission in June, the Super Heavy vehicle descended to the sea with remarkable precision, coming within a half-centimeter of its intended landing spot.

With that outcome in hand, SpaceX felt comfortable trying to bring the booster back to the launch pad for the fifth Starship mission. It took an additional month for the Federal Aviation Administration, which is in charge of guaranteeing public safety during commercial space launches, to examine SpaceX’s flight plan.

The federal agency finally granted SpaceX permission to launch Starship and make a recovery attempt back at the launch pad on Saturday. SpaceX signaled that it was prepared and gave the all-clear to begin the last countdown preparations overnight, in anticipation of the launch window on Sunday morning.

Additionally, Starship made a perfect hit.

Applause broke out at SpaceX’s rocket factory in Hawthorne, California, as the company broadcast live from Sunday’s Starship test flight. The explosion occurred as the dust settled at the launch pad, revealing the Super Heavy booster securely in the mechanical arms’ grasp. Following a collective exhalation of breath, all eyes turned to Starship, which was essentially the rocket’s upper stage, as it cut its six engines and set out on a 40-minute cruise that would take it halfway around the planet.

When the coast phase came to an end, the ship was drawn back into the atmosphere by Earth’s gravity. A sheath of plasma encircling the vehicle was visible in live video that was downlinked from the rocket via SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet network. Aluminum would melt at temperatures outside the ship that were expected to reach 2,600°F (1,430°C). Stainless steel that is more heat resistant is used to make Starship and Super Heavy.

During reentry, Starship flew with its nose pointed upwards, exposing thousands of ceramic heat shield tiles to the scorching airflow. SpaceX added a secondary heat shield layer beneath the upgraded thermal protection tiles for this flight. Parts of the heat shield were stripped away during the previous Starship test flight in June by the intense heat, and the ship’s flaps, which aid in maintaining control as it descends farther into the atmosphere, were harmed.

Nevertheless, the ship made it through reentry and executed its landing burn, slowing down with the help of three engines to make for a comparatively gentle splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Starship, which SpaceX also designed to be reusable, reached the earth for the first time unharmed in June thanks to this achievement.

Throughout the test flight on Sunday, Starship descended steadily. Though nothing as serious as what SpaceX saw on the previous flight, there were some indications in the onboard camera footage of relatively minor heating damage to some of the ship’s flaps.

At the Indian Ocean splashdown zone of Starship, night had fallen. The ship initiated a final braking maneuver by flipping from a horizontal to a vertical orientation and slowing down below the speed of sound. This allowed the ship to settle into the sea and come into view for a camera mounted on a nearby buoy. This verified that Starship landed exactly where it was meant to.

Shortly after splashdown, the vehicle was captured on camera from the buoy exploding in a ball of fire, which was to be expected after the engines cut off and the ship fell into the water.

The SpaceX engineer presenting the company’s live webcast of the test flight on Sunday, Kate Tice, said, “That was amazing.”. That was as good an ending as we could have hoped for, since we had no intention of recovering any of the ship’s hardware. “.”.

This time, the ship made a controlled reentry with its flaps intact and reached the water, Huot said. “Ship just gave us one heck of a show.”. “Spacecraft are designed to soar. Today truly flew by. Well, let’s get set for the following one. “.

A tweet was the first of it.

Nearly four years ago, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk, first proposed the company’s plan to retrieve Starship’s first stage, known as the Super Heavy booster.

A post on Twitter in December 2020, two years before he bought the social media platform and renamed it X, stated, “We’re going to try to catch the Super Heavy booster with the launch tower arm, using the grid fins to take the load.”.

This is not how SpaceX lands its workhorse rocket, the smaller Falcon 9 booster. Being able to land on floating drone ships hundreds of miles offshore in the ocean or at an onshore landing zone apart from its launch pad, Falcon 9s with landing legs are becoming common. Although Super Heavy booster is nearly 2.5 times larger and 50% taller than first stage of Falcon 9, SpaceX has successfully landed more than 350 Falcon 9 boosters.

This elevates Super Heavy to a different level. The first stage booster of a starship is bigger than a 747 jumbo jet’s fuselage. Musk’s initial description closely resembled SpaceX’s mid-air capture of the Super Heavy booster on Sunday.

Engineers at SpaceX eventually hope to become experts at launching and landing Starships and quickly rotating the rockets for another flight. SpaceX needs several weeks at least to refurbish a Falcon 9 booster before it can be used on another mission. SpaceX hopes to reduce this turnaround time to a few days or hours with Starship.

Musk stated that the method saves mass and does not require landing legs in his 2020 postings detailing the strategy to catch Super Heavy boosters. In addition, he stated that the plan “allows for immediate repositioning of the booster on to (the) launch mount,” meaning that it will be “ready to refly in less than an hour.”. ****.

Musk stated he anticipated SpaceX to start landing Starships back in Texas sometime in 2025 during a speech at Starbase in April. The ship will be captured by the launch tower’s arms, just like the booster was.

At the conclusion of SpaceX’s webcast on Sunday, Huot stated, “Obviously, there’s a lot of work before we get there, but we just caught a booster.”. The search for a ship’s arrival time will begin very soon. ****.

Next, what?

The next Starship flight’s itinerary and potential date have not been made public by SpaceX. According to SpaceX, the FAA has already granted the company a launch license to carry out the identical mission profile as Sunday’s test flight on the next Starship. However, SpaceX develops software iteratively, so it will incorporate Sunday’s lessons into the next flight. The upcoming mission will probably have some new components.

SpaceX’s list of priorities at Starbase includes more than just catching the ship. The ability of Starship to restart its Raptor engines in space—a requirement for the spacecraft to leave low-Earth orbit and head toward a guided reentry—will probably be one of SpaceX’s next main priorities.

SpaceX purposefully set Starship on a suborbital trajectory for these first test flights, which brings it back into Earth’s atmosphere naturally. This prevents Starship from becoming stuck in space as an oversized piece of orbital debris. In order for SpaceX to accomplish its goal of enabling human exploration of the Moon and Mars, they need to perfect in-space refueling, which will be possible once orbital flight is unlocked. This will enable SpaceX to start launching Starlink internet satellites on Starship.

Recently, SpaceX built a new launch tower in South Texas, to the west of the Starship launch pad. Although the second launch pad is still under construction, it might be operational by the following year. Additionally, SpaceX intends to turn on two Starship launch pads in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

In South Texas, SpaceX is assembling several boosters and ships at different phases of construction. The company claims that a massive new manufacturing complex named Starfactory will produce several ships and boosters every week.

To meet the rocket’s performance target of putting more than 100 metric tons of payload mass into orbit, engineers are working on two larger versions of Starship and Super Heavy. Several Starship variations are planned in the long run, including space stations that could be derived from Starships, refueling tankers, propellant depots, satellite deployers, and ships that can carry people.

NASA is currently SpaceX’s largest Starship user. For the Artemis program, the agency is giving SpaceX $4 billion to develop two modified Starships as human-rated lunar landers. From a location close to the Moon, Starship will move astronauts to the lunar surface and back, where they will be transported by NASA’s Orion spacecraft before returning to Earth.

All of this depends on SpaceX launching a large number of Starships. Transferring sufficient liquid oxygen and ultra-cold methane to a low-Earth orbit propellant depot may require ten or more Starship refueling tankers. When the Starship lunar lander launches on a Super Heavy booster, this depot would then replenish the lander’s tanks with hundreds of tons of propellant, enabling the lander to reach the Moon and relaunch with NASA’s astronauts.

Advantages of SpaceX’s design include the potential for Starship to carry payloads of up to 100 metric tons to the Moon or Mars after refueling—a much larger capacity than any other rocket. There would be countless opportunities for exciting missions because the ships could be refueled repeatedly and regularly travel between Earth and space destinations.

SpaceX intends to use its two adjacent launch pads in Texas at some point in the upcoming year to send two Starships into orbit. The ships will dock collectively in orbit to test technologies for the first-ever, large-scale space transfer of cryogenic propellants. Future Artemis mission campaigns, in which Starships must launch quickly one after the other from several pads, will be modeled after this demonstration.

Lori Glaze, acting deputy associate administrator for NASA’s exploration systems development division, stated of the Artemis program’s first lunar landing mission, “There is no doubt that the Human Landing System is critical path for Artemis III.”.

Officially slated to launch in September 2026, Artemis III is likely to be delayed by at least a few years because Starship is now ready and because new spacesuits that are designed for commercial use will protect astronauts walking on the Moon. In the event that the Starship lunar lander experiences longer delays, NASA and SpaceX are considering different mission profiles for Artemis III, according to earlier reports from Ars.

In order for the depot to be ready to refuel Starship for a lunar landing, SpaceX needs to launch its systems at a rate that will allow them to do so, according to Glaze’s assessment from last week. So, their ability to reach a rate at which they can launch at a quick enough cadence is actually the crucial factor. “.

SpaceX intends to increase the frequency of its Starship launches by utilizing multiple launch pads located in Texas and Florida. It will also be crucial for SpaceX to regularly capture the ship and booster in order to increase the frequency of launches. For this reason, NASA officials were keenly observing the flight on Sunday even though the agency wasn’t directly involved.

The test flight on Sunday was praised by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

Nelson wrote on X, “SpaceX deserves massive props for its fifth Starship flight test and successful booster catch today.”. As we gear up for our return to the Moon under Artemis, further testing will get us ready for even more daring missions, like traveling to the Moon’s South Pole and eventually Mars. ****.

“I appreciate your kind words, sir. I’m excited to help NASA bring people back to the moon,” Musk answered.