SpaceX Catches Rocket Booster at Launch Pad
SpaceX has pulled off one of its biggest achievements yet, using mechanical arms to catch the booster part of a spacecraft after the launch of its enormous Starship rocket.
The company's CEO Elon Musk called it "science fiction without the fiction part."
Usually, the boosters — that help power rockets into space — land in the ocean. Never before has a booster been caught back at the launch pad.
But that's exactly what happened on October 13, after the empty 120-meter-high Starship blasted off at sunrise from Texas.
This was the fifth time that SpaceX has launched a Starship rocket, and it was by far the most successful test yet of the spacecraft that Musk plans to use to send people to the moon and on to Mars.
At the flight director's command, the first-stage booster flew back to the launch pad from where it had blasted off seven minutes earlier.
The launch tower's huge metal arms, which have been compared to chopsticks, caught the 71-meter metal booster and held it tightly, well above the ground.
"Even in this day and age, what we just saw is magic," said Dan Huot from SpaceX.
It was up to the flight director to decide, in real time with a manual control, whether to attempt the landing. SpaceX said both the booster and launch tower had to be in good condition.
The spacecraft launched by the booster continued around the world. An hour after launch, it made a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean, just as planned.
SpaceX has been recovering the first-stage boosters of its smaller Falcon 9 rockets for nine years. But they land on platforms several kilometers from their launch pads — not on them.
Recycling Falcon boosters has sped up the launch rate and saved SpaceX millions. Musk intends to do the same for Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built.
