SpaceX on Saturday pulled off its ‘first ever catch’ of a spaceship a technical quality that shows the feasibility of fully reusable rockets bringing affordable space flight one step closer to reality.
Surviving the extreme heat of re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, the starship emerged from a cloudy sky and then descended slowly over the Starbase before it slipped between the mechanical chopstick arms above the launch pad 2.
“That was the Holy Grail of spaceflight, plummeting through fire to be snatched out of the air by steel. We caught a Starship and now, everything changes,” SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said.
The success marked a milestone in the space industry’s decade-long pursuit of fully reusable rocket systems- An idea that can drastically reduce mission costs and make more frequent launches possible.
The beach near the Gulf of Mexico,Boxa Chica witnessed scores of people who broke out into ecstatic cheers as the spacecraft return to it launchpad. Soft rock hit ‘Baby Come Back, played during the breathtaking final descent on SpaceX’s official livestream X.
This is the 15th test of Starship and the first that hoped to fully recover both parts of the rocket. SpaceX wants to make the top and bottom sections of Starship fully reusable.
SpaceX has managed to catch the Super Heavy Booster on three earlier test flights.
But this was the first time the upper stage of the rocket, which only reached orbit for the first time in September, has been grabbed by the “chopsticks”.