Elon Musk’s Starship rocket has completed a world first after part of it was captured on its return to the launch pad.
The SpaceX vehicle’s lower half manoeuvred back beside its launch tower where it was caught in a giant pair of mechanical arms, as part of its fifth test flight.
It brings SpaceX’s ambition of developing a fully reusable and rapidly deployable rocket a big step closer.
“A day for the history books,” engineers at SpaceX declared as the booster landed safely.
The chances of the bottom part of the rocket, known as the Super Heavy booster, being caught so cleanly on the first attempt seemed slim.
Prior to the launch, the SpaceX team said it would not be surprised if the booster was instead directed to land in the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX can now point to some extraordinary achievements in the past two test flights. This comes only eighteen months after its inaugural flight, which saw the vehicle blown apart not long after launch.
SpaceX argues that these failures are also part of its development plan – to launch early in the expectation of failure so that it can collect as much data as possible and develop its systems quicker than its rivals.
The initial stages of the ascent of the fifth test were the same as the previous outing, with the Ship and booster separating two and three-quarter minutes after leaving the ground.
At this point the booster began to head back towards the launch site at Boca Chica in Texas.
With just two minutes to go till landing it was still not clear if the attempt would be made, as final checks were carried out by the team operating the tower.
When the flight director gave the go-ahead, cheers went up from SpaceX employees at mission control.
The company had said that thousands of criteria had to be met for the attempt to be made.
As the Super Heavy booster re-entered the atmosphere as its raptor engines worked to slow it down from speeds in excess of a few thousands miles per hour.
When it approached the landing tower, which stands 146m-high (480ft), it seemed to almost float, orange flames engulfed the booster and it deftly slotted into the giant mechanical arms.
The Ship part of the rocket, which is where equipment and crew will eventually be held for future missions, fired up its own engines after separating from the booster.
It was successfully landed in the Indian Ocean around forty minutes later.
“Ship landed precisely on target! Second of the two objectives achieved”, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X.
Not only was the Ship landed accurately but SpaceX also managed to preserve some of the vehicle’s hardware, which it had not expected.
(BBC News)
