In a groundbreaking achievement, SpaceX’s Starship rocket has successfully completed its fifth major test flight, with a historic first: capturing the booster back at the launch tower. This accomplishment is a critical step towards SpaceX’s vision of fully reusable rockets, a key component for their ambitious plans of sending humans to the moon and Mars.
The Starship, hailed as the most powerful rocket ever built, launched at 8:25 a.m. New York time. After propelling Starship into space, the Super Heavy booster began its journey back to Earth. The booster was then “caught” by two arms extending from Starship’s launch tower, a testament to SpaceX’s engineering prowess. This successful catch was likened by SpaceX engineer Jessie Anderson to “trying to catch my tears just like the chopsticks caught the booster,” according to Bloomberg.
This recovery of the booster after launch is a game-changer for SpaceX, paving the way for commercial operations with the Starship. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has consistently emphasized the need for full reusability of the Starship, unlike its partially reusable Falcon 9 rockets. This objective aims to fully recover both components of the vehicle: the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy booster.
This approach would enable multiple Starship flights in a single day, significantly reducing the cost of launching the rocket. The test flight also marked the first attempt by SpaceX to achieve this feat with the Super Heavy booster.
It’s noteworthy that this mission was conducted amidst public criticism by Musk towards the FAA’s slow approval process for commercial space launch licenses.
While the successful booster catch was the highlight of this flight, it mirrored the June test flight in many ways. Some of Starship’s flaps appeared to burn up during the vehicle’s descent, but Starship managed to survive the plunge before flipping itself and reigniting its engines to splash down in the Indian Ocean. Despite the subsequent apparent explosion, SpaceX continues to view these test flights as valuable learning experiences, emphasizing that each new launch pushes them closer to their goals, even in the face of challenges.
With this milestone achieved, SpaceX is steadily moving towards its ultimate goal of making space travel more accessible and affordable for future generations.
