SpaceX caught the first stage of its Starship as it returned to the launch pad after a test flight, marking the company’s first-ever achievement in rapid reusability.
The rocket fell from the sky and switched on its engines to slow down before starting along the massive metal landing tower, according to the live broadcast. The flight was the fifth test flight for the fully integrated Starship, which stands nearly 400 feet tall and consists of a Super Heavy booster and a Starship spacecraft.
SpaceX planned to return Starship’s huge first stage booster, known as the Super Heavy, directly to the launch pad by catching it with “chopsticks” on the launch tower in a bold and entirely unprecedented manoeuvre. The mission aimed to break new ground for Starship and for spaceflight in general.
Moreover, the manoeuvre was a step towards SpaceX’s goal of “full and rapid reusability” of Starship, which is the largest and most powerful rocket in the world and a cornerstone of founder Elon Musk’s hopes of colonising Mars, The Washington Post reported. He plans to launch about five unmanned Starship missions to Mars over the next two years, and then possibly manned missions after that.
The success is attributed to the company’s engineers conducting “extensive upgrades” of hardware and software to prepare for missile capture. Therefore, thousands of different criteria for the vehicle and launch pad had to be met before the decision was made to move to rocket capture.
The vehicle is designed to be fully and quickly reusable, a characteristic that, combined with Starship’s unprecedented power, could revolutionise spaceflight. NASA expresses hope the company remains successful, investing around $4 billion in the programme and intends to use Starship to return its astronauts to the surface of the moon as part of its Artemis programme.
