SpaceX Makes History With Successful Rocket Catch in Texas

SpaceX’s giant Starship spacecraft pulled off a remarkable feat on Saturday afternoon in the quest to build fully reusable rockets. For the first time, the spacecraft successfully returned from orbit to its launch site in South Texas, where it was caught between two mechanical arms on the launch tower.

For the past decade, SpaceX has successfully landed the boosters of its smaller Falcon 9 rockets and then reused them on subsequent launches. But the upper stages of the Falcon 9s are still thrown away each time.

The Starship rocket system is not only much larger than Falcon 9, but it was designed from the start to be fully reusable. Bringing back an upper stage from orbit is a major technical hurdle, and SpaceX was able to pull it off on its first try.

Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator, offered his congratulations on X. “Making more believers by the day….one step closer to,” he wrote, adding an emoji of the moon and the American flag. Starship is slated to serve as one of two lander designs that will take astronauts to the surface of the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program.

Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, posted a video on X showing a view of Starship from below, part of the post-landing inspection.

A few hours earlier, the spacecraft, which is about 170 feet long, had been traveling at more than 17,000 miles per hour at an altitude of 170 miles. Then, one of its engines fired briefly, nudging it out of orbit to begin its fall back to Earth.