Elon Musk’s SpaceX made history Saturday after its Starship spacecraft returned from orbit and was caught by giant mechanical arms at the company’s Texas launch facility for the first time.
The milestone came roughly 22 hours after Starship launched Friday from SpaceX’s Starbase facility, although the company fell short of its goal of recovering both stages of the rocket after its Super Heavy booster exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
The catch marks a major step toward SpaceX’s goal of developing a fully reusable rocket system to reduce launch costs and support more frequent space missions.
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During its 15th test flight, Starship deployed 26 Starlink satellites and completed 14 orbits around Earth before returning to the launch site, where the tower’s mechanical arms, known as Mechazilla, caught the spacecraft.
Walter Isaacson, Musk’s biographer, celebrated the achievement on X, recalling a December 2020 meeting when Musk proposed catching Starship with the launch tower’s mechanical arms.
“This is actually a bigger deal for humanity than most people can imagine,” he wrote. “I will always remember the looks on the engineers’ faces in the Starbase conference room in December 2020 when @elonmusk suggested, then insisted, that the Mechazilla launchpad arms could catch a returning Starship.”
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SpaceX previously caught its Super Heavy booster three times, but Friday’s attempt failed after its engines shut down prematurely during descent, prompting a diversion and explosion over the Gulf of Mexico. Engineers are investigating the cause.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman also praised the successful Starship catch on X.
“It was almost magic,” Isaacman wrote. “Making more believers by the day.”
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NASA is relying on Starship technology for its Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the moon, while Musk hopes to eventually use the spacecraft for missions to Mars.
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