Launching its sixth Starship test flight from Texas, Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully used a unique technique utilising massive metal arms to bring the rocket’s imposing first-stage booster back to Earth for the first time.
At 8:25 a.m. Eastern time, the 400-foot-tall monster that is the world’s largest rocket safely lifted off from SpaceX’s headquarters near Brownsville, Texas.
The 233-foot massive booster that powers the enormous rocket on the Starship broke away from its upper-stage vehicle and launched into space.
On this occasion, though, the booster made its way back to Starbase, where it was successfully grasped by two enormous chopstick-like appendages, or Mechazilla, as SpaceX refers to the building.
“Folks, this is a day for the engineering history books,” following the booster’s safe landing in the tower’s grip and the company employees’ enthusiastic applause, a SpaceX representative stated in a voiceover on the firm’s livestream.
SpaceX claims that this technological achievement demonstrates that Starship can be quickly used, much like an aircraft, in contrast to the disposable rockets of previous generations.
“We succeeded with a catch on our first attempt, thanks to the tireless work of SpaceX engineers,” a statement posted on SpaceX.com said.
“Thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria had to be met prior to the catch attempt.”
Newsng understands that NASA’s goal of returning humans to the moon and Musk’s ambitious idea of someday colonising Mars all depend on the Starship.
The next time Earth and Mars line up, in late 2026, is when Musk envisions sending the first Starships to Mars, with crewed trips to follow in 2028.
We earlier reported that a pioneering duo of astronauts has made history by becoming the first private civilians to do a spacewalk, which NASA describes as “a giant leap forward” for the commercial space industry.
The first non-professional crew to complete one of the riskiest space manoeuvres, a spacewalk, consists of a billionaire and an engineer.
