United States:
SpaceX on Sunday successfully “captured” the first stage booster of its Starship megarocket as it returned to the launch pad after a test flight, a world first in the company’s quest for rapid reusability.
The “superheavy booster” had blasted off a few minutes earlier, attached to the spaceship rocket, and then made a picture-perfect, controlled return to the same path in Texas, where a pair of enormous mechanical “chopsticks” reached out from the launch tower to bring the slowly descending booster to a stop, according to a livestream from Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.
“Folks, this is a day for the tech history books,” a SpaceX spokesperson said in a voiceover on the company’s livestream, after the booster was safely in the tower’s grasp and company executives cheered erupted.
“The tower caught the missile!!” SpaceX founder Musk posted on X.
Booster starts in the top right corner. Watch until the end. Sound on pic.twitter.com/jS70tHLNcr
— 𝙺𝚒𝚖𝚋𝚊𝚕 𝙼𝚞𝚜𝚔 🤠 (@kimbal) October 13, 2024
The launch took place at 7:25 am (1225 GMT) in clear weather. As the booster returned to the launch pad, Starship’s upper stage would crash into the Indian Ocean within the hour.
On its last flight in June, SpaceX made its first successful landing with Starship, a prototype spaceship that Musk hopes will one day take humans to Mars.
NASA is also eagerly awaiting a modified version of Starship, which will serve as a lander vehicle for manned flights to the moon later this decade under the Artemis program.
SpaceX said its engineers “spent years preparing and months testing the booster capture effort, with engineers putting in tens of thousands of hours building the infrastructure to maximize our chances of success.”
Teams monitored to ensure “thousands” of criteria were met on both the vehicle and the tower before attempting to return the Super Heavy booster.
If the conditions had not been met, the booster would have been diverted for a landing in the Gulf of Mexico, as in previous tests.
Instead, after receiving the green light, the returning booster slowed down from supersonic speeds and its powerful “chopstick arms” embraced it.
‘Fail fast, learn fast’
The large mechanical arms, dubbed “Mechazilla” by Musk, have caused a lot of excitement among space enthusiasts.
The spaceship is 400 feet tall with both stages combined – about 90 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty.
The Super Heavy booster, which stands 240 feet (73 meters) tall, produces 16.7 million pounds (74.3 meganewtons) of thrust, about twice as powerful as the Saturn V rockets used during the Apollo missions.
SpaceX’s “fail fast, learn fast” strategy of rapid iterative testing, even if the rockets explode spectacularly, ultimately accelerated development and contributed to the company’s success.
Founded only in 2002, it quickly surpassed the aerospace industry giants and is now the world leader in orbital launches, in addition to providing the only U.S. spacecraft currently certified to carry astronauts.
It has also created the world’s largest internet satellite constellation – invaluable in disaster and war zones.
But his fundamental vision of making humanity a multiplanetary species is increasingly at risk of being overshadowed by Musk’s embrace of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his alignment with right-wing politics.
In recent weeks, the company has spoken openly with the Federal Aviation Administration about launch permits and alleged violations, with Musk accusing the agency of overreach and calling for its chief, Michael Whitaker, to resign.
“He’s trying to position himself for minimal regulatory interference in SpaceX once Donald Trump becomes president,” said Mark Hass, a marketing expert and professor at Arizona State University. “But it’s a calculated gamble if things go the other way.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)