October 13, 2024

— For the first time, a rocket returning to Earth after its launch has been caught while descending to the same pad from where it lifted off.

SpaceX on Sunday (Oct. 13) achieved the recovery feat on the fifth integrated test of its Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster. The nearly 400-foot-tall (121-meter), steel-skinned vehicle sent the Starship into space at 8:25 a.m. EDT (1225 GMT or 7:25 a.m. CDT local time) before the Super Heavy relit some of its 33 engines to fly back to SpaceX's Starbase production and launch facility in Texas.

As Super Heavy lowered itself next to its launch tower, two large mechanical arms pinched the rocket's body, catching it like a pair of chopsticks.

The nearly seven-minute flight by Super Heavy moved SpaceX a step closer to "full and rapid reusability." The company is working towards achieving airline-like operations with the fully-reusable Starship. Eventually, the plan is for the Starship to also return to the launch pad, be caught and mounted atop its Super Heavy for a quick turnaround to its next flight.

On Sunday's flight, Starship followed a similar trajectory to its prior test flight in June, reentering Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean and splashing down west of Australia about an hour after its launch. The spacecraft was then allowed to sink to the seafloor.

Super Heavy caught by "Mechazilla". Click to enlarge video in new pop-up window. (SpaceX)

SpaceX found the confidence needed to attempt flying Super Heavy back to Starbase after achieving an on-target landing in the Gulf of Mexico on June's test. Still, "thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria" had to be met prior to the manual command being sent to the rocket to aim for the launch pad on Sunday.

Had the flight director not sent the command prior to the rocket's boostback burn being completed or if automated health checks revealed unacceptable conditions with Super Heavy or the tower, the booster would have defaulted to a splashdown off the coast of Texas.

Instead, Super Heavy produced sonic booms heard in the area around Starbase, announcing its return.

In addition to demonstrating the ability to catch Super Heavy for its reuse, Sunday's flight also tested a complete rework of Starship's heat shield. SpaceX technicians spent more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with newer-generation tiles, a backup ablative layer and additional protections between the flap structures.

This effort, along with updates to the ship's operations and software for reentry and landing burn, was aimed at improving the heat shield's performance over the previous flight, which saw significant tile loss and the near burn through of one of its flaps while bringing the spacecraft down in the ocean.

Camera views appeared to show the tile work on Starship was more successful on Sunday.

"With each flight building on the learnings from the last, testing improvements in hardware and operations across every facet of Starship, we're on the verge of demonstrating techniques fundamental to Starship's fully and rapidly reusable design," read a pre-flight description on SpaceX's website. "By continuing to push our hardware in a flight environment, and doing so as safely and frequently as possible, we'll rapidly bring Starship online and revolutionize humanity's ability to access space."

SpaceX is developing Starship to ultimately fly humans to Mars, but first will use the vehicle to complete the deployment of its Starlink satellite internet constellation and serve as a human landing system for NASA's first Artemis missions to return astronauts to the moon's surface.