SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster successfully returned to the pad after liftoff to be caught by the launch tower’s mechanical arms in an incredible feat Sunday morning. The milestone came during the fifth flight of the company’s Starship, and is a huge step for the rocket’s planned reusability. Starship launched at about 8:25AM ET from SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas Starbase.
Landing rockets is nothing new for SpaceX, which has now been reusing its Falcon 9 workhorse for several years, but the company took a completely different approach for recapturing Super Heavy. Whereas Falcon 9 typically lands on a drone ship out in the ocean, Super Heavy returned to its launch site and had to navigate into the narrow opening between the launch towers’ outstretched “chopsticks.” The move risked destroying the tower if Super Heavy didn’t pull it off correctly. It did, though, and live footage from the flight test shows the booster neatly parking itself back at the tower to thunderous cheering from everyone watching from the viewing room.
Starship, meanwhile, continued on its flight for about an hour after separating from the booster and splashed down in the Indian Ocean as planned around 9:30AM ET. The entire Starship transportation system, consisting of the Super Heavy first stage and the Starship second stage, is designed to be reusable.