SpaceX has successfully caught the top part of its huge Starship rocket for the first time, after a flight lasting twenty-two and a half hours.
The rocket returned to Earth and hovered near its launch tower whose mechanical arms – nicknamed chopsticks – then secured it.
The company had hoped to catch the bottom part of the rocket as well, but this was aborted a few minutes after the launch on Friday.
SpaceX needs to reliably recover both parts of Starship so that it can fly repeatedly and drastically reduce costs.
There were loud cheers from SpaceX staff who were watching the flight as the rocket returned to the Starbase launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas.
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.
The 124m-tall (407ft) rocket successfully blasted off from the Starbase launchpad in Boca Chica, Texas at 16:47 local time on Friday.
The plan was to grab the bottom part of the rocket – the Super Heavy booster – six and a half minutes later when it returned.
But the booster activated an automated abort, diverting instead to the ocean where it hovered above the water before exploding.
Elon Musk later posted on X that the booster was "slightly low on fuel"
The top part of the rocket continued its journey to space where it deployed 26 satellites, which form part of the Starlink constellation that provides high-speed internet.
The Ship completed 14 orbits around the Earth before returning to the launch tower.
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".
Before the flight, SpaceX said it would only try to catch the Ship after carefully assessing the vehicle while it was in space.
Any problems would have resulted in the ship being brought down in the ocean in the same way as the booster.
Building a fully reusable rocket is a long-held ambition for SpaceX.
In 2015, it became the first company to vertically land part of a rocket with its Falcon 9 booster.
Falcon 9 rockets now fly more than 100 times a year and the ability to reuse the bottom part of the rocket has dramatically cut the costs of launch.
But landing an entire Starship rocket would take spaceflight to the next level, says Prof Malcolm Macdonald, president of Royal Aeronautical Society – but it didn't happen this time.
"Not recovering the first stage is a setback. But they have recovered Super Heavy before and so successfully returning and recovering the Ship, is a substantial step forward. They have demonstrated the two halves of the recovery challenge, just not yet on the same flight. The next milestone would be stitching those achievements together and then proving they can do it reliably, repeatedly and economically."
After SpaceX became a public company earlier this year, its shareholders will be carefully monitoring this flight, as will Nasa.
The progress of Starship has direct implications for Nasa's attempt to land humans on the Moon in 2028 – a highly ambitious timeline.
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Watch: From launch to fiery splashdown, SpaceX's Starship completes orbit test
SpaceX has been given a Nasa contract to configure the Ship into a lander that will eventually take astronauts down to the lunar surface.
But it is not the only company working with Nasa. Blue Origin, owned by rival tech billionaire Jeff Bezos, also has a contract to use its New Glenn rocket and lander for the Moon touchdown.
Both companies will also play a key role in the Artemis III mission, which is currently planned for summer 2027 – another challenging schedule.
Four astronauts in Nasa's Orion spacecraft will attempt to dock with both SpaceX and Blue Origin's landers during the voyage.
Starship will need to make a lot of progress in the coming months to meet these commitments – the pace of the rocket's development has been far slower than SpaceX had intended.
But Blue Origin also has much work to do. The company suffered a major setback earlier this year when its rocket exploded, totally destroying its launchpad in Florida.
Blue Origin had said its spacecraft would be back in action by the end of this year, but a return to flight has now been delayed to early in 2027.
Nasa is under pressure to meet its timelines. Its administrator Jared Isaacman has said the US was in a race with China to get to the Moon. China plans to land its Taikonauts on the lunar surface by 2030.
Fox Style News Syndicate. Sourced from broadcast reporting: Read Full Source Coverage.