Elon Musk’s SpaceX makes history with incredible pinpoint Starship landing in Texas as NASA boss praises ‘magic’ feat
Elon Musk’s SpaceX made history after managing to catch their Starship on its return to Earth using two mechanical ‘chopstick’ arms.
Astonishing footage emerged shortly after the feat on Saturday showing the Starship descending slowly over a launch pad and being caught between the two arms.
The feat was what Musk and his team had hoped for, the first-ever capture of a ship after flying back from space.
It wasn’t without its faults, however, with the first-stage booster of the 407ft ship exploding shortly after it took off from Texas on Friday.
Wreckage remained in the Gulf of Mexico, cordoned off by buoys, as the stainless steel, bullet-shaped spacecraft lowered itself upright at the launch pad.
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman took to his X profile and heaped praise on the achievement.
He wrote: ‘Congrats to Elon Musk and the SpaceX team! It was almost magic. Making more believers by the day.’
The space agency has a lot riding on the program, with SpaceX having a multibillion-dollar deal with the agency to retrofit a Starship to be used for a lunar landing.
Astonishing footage emerged shortly after the feat on Saturday showing the Starship descending slowly over a launch pad and being caught between the two arms
The feat was what Musk and his team had hoped for, the first-ever capture of a ship after flying back from space
The rocket is seen here on its approach back down to Earth in a video shared by SpaceX
Musk too congratulated his team, saying: ‘Congratulations to an incredible team at SpaceX!!!’
He followed that up with footage of him on the landing pad inspecting the Starship, saying that it ‘looks great.’
Spokesman Dan Huot said: ‘That was the Holy Grail of space flight, plummeting through fire to be snatched out of the air by steel. We caught a Starship and now, everything changes.’
SpaceX officials said Saturday’s catch demonstrates the full reusability of Starship, crucial for rapid and low-cost recycling.
Although Friday’s booster recovery failed, the company had already made three previous booster catches, validating the technique.
The world’s largest and most powerful rocket blasted off late Friday afternoon from SpaceX’s Starship base near the US-Mexican border.
Separating neatly from its booster before things went awry, the upper-stage spacecraft soared into orbit and released 26 advanced Starlink satellites.
Starship continued circling the world 165 miles up, with live views of itself and Earth streaming down via Starlink. It completed 14 laps around Earth, outshining the previous mission’s one to two laps.
The Starship is seen here taking off from Starbase, Texas, on Friday
SpaceX officials said Saturday’s catch demonstrates the full reusability of Starship, crucial for rapid and low-cost recycling
It was SpaceX’s 15th flight of a full-scale Starship since 2023 and its only second trip to orbit.
SpaceX reported that everything on the spacecraft, including its vital heat shield, appeared to work well.
As for the booster, SpaceX’s Kate Tice said its engines stopped firing too soon on the way back down.
The booster’s guidance system sensed it wasn´t in the right position and automatically initiated the watery detour and self-destruction. Engineers are still investigating the cause.
Until now, SpaceX had captured returning booster rockets three times. However, the ‘catch’ of Starship was extraordinarily complex because the spaceship fell much faster and from a much higher altitude than boosters do.
It is a long-held ambition by SpaceX to make space travel more efficient, with the firm becoming the first to vertically land part of a rocket in 2015 with its Falcon 9 booster. These rockets now fly more than 100 times a year.
