SpaceX has caught the upper stage of its Starship rocket for the first time, using the giant arms of the launch tower at its site in South Texas. The catch came at around 4:20 PM Eastern Time, about a day after the rocket lifted off on its 15th test flight.
Starship has two parts. The Super Heavy booster is the huge first stage that pushes the rocket off the ground. The Ship is the upper stage that travels on into orbit. The launch tower, nicknamed “Mechazilla”, has two movable arms called “chopsticks”, which grab the returning vehicle out of the air instead of letting it land on legs.
SpaceX has caught Super Heavy boosters this way before, but it had never tried the manoeuvre on the Ship until now. The Ship stayed in orbit for roughly 22 hours after launch, then came back down. It fell through the clouds, turned upright and settled between the waiting arms.
The flight also met another of its main goals. The Ship deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites into orbit. Starlink is SpaceX’s satellite network for providing internet service.
Booster catch aborted
The flight did not go fully to plan. SpaceX had hoped to attempt a “double catch”, in which the Super Heavy V3 booster would return to the tower first and the Ship would follow a day later. The booster, however, ran into a problem while coming back down and abandoned its catch attempt. It changed course towards the Gulf of Mexico and exploded before it reached the water.
SpaceX is still working to find out what made the booster abort its return. Because the company has caught boosters on earlier launches, the booster failure is not seen as an insurmountable obstacle.
SpaceX congratulated its team on the Ship catch, calling it an incredible achievement.
Catching both stages is central to SpaceX’s aim of reusing the whole rocket, since a vehicle recovered at the tower can be inspected and flown again.
