paceX caught the giant Starship Booster after their fifth fling test. The spacecraft company launched a 400-foot-tall Starship vehicle for the fifth
time on October 13th. The spacecraft took off from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas with the purpose of aiming for new ground and records.
SpaceX mission had the purpose of returning the Starship’s first-stage booster which is also known as Super Heavy, back to its launch mount in a maneuver that had never been used before.
And, SpaceX’s bold strategy proved to be a successful one. Elon Musk’s Super Heavy spaceship executed a new procedure for their landing only seven minutes after the liftoff. The landing used their launch tower “metal arms” in order to land safely and left anyone amazed by their capabilities.
Kate Tice, SpaceX manager, and Quality Systems Engineering said on the live commentary meeting “This is a day for the engineering history books”, and “This is absolutely insane! On the first-ever attempt, we have successfully caught the Super Heavy booster back at the launch tower." while all employees were cheering.
Dan Hout, who is SpaceX spokesperson, also commented on their achievement saying “Are you kidding me?” and “Even in this day and age, what we just saw — that looked like magic."
Even more so, you can watch the whole mission on X, where SpaceX talked about their mission saying “Thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria had to be met prior to catching the Super Heavy booster. Thanks to the tireless work of SpaceX engineers, we succeeded with catch on our first attempt.”.
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Elon Musk also talked about the successful mission in a social media post on X, where he rewrote “Just inspected the Starship booster, which the arms have now placed back in its launch mount. Looks great! Starship is designed to achieve flight of its rocket booster ultimately within an hour after liftoff. The booster returns within ~5 minutes, so the remaining time is reloading propellant and placing a ship on top of the booster.”
For the Flight 5. SpaceX mission, retrieving the Starship was not the only purpose. Elon Musk’s SpaceX also wished to send the 165-foot-tall starship to the upper stage and bring it back to Earth. This mission happened 65 minutes after the takeoff, yet, in order to fulfill this mission, the Ship needed to fire three of its six engines.
Kate Tice also talked about this event “That was amazing,” (...) "We were not intending to recover any of Starship, so that was the best ending that we could have hoped for.".
SpaceX's purpose is to create and develop a safe way for humanity to populate Mars and explore the unknown. Elon Musk’s company is looking forward to creating safe and reusable spaceships that can revolutionize the industry.
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