SpaceX launched its massive Starship rocket on Sunday, marking its boldest test flight yet, with the Super Heavy booster being caught by giant mechanical arms upon its return to the launchpad.
Standing at 121 meters tall, the Super Heavy booster attached to the Starship rocket lifted off at sunrise from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. The remarkable feat was followed by a controlled return of the booster to the pad, where a pair of huge mechanical \"chopsticks,\" named \"Mechazilla\" by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, extended from the launch tower to catch the descending booster.
The liftoff occurred at 7:25 a.m. local time under clear skies. While the booster returned to the launchpad, the upper stage of Starship was expected to splash down in the Indian Ocean within the hour.
In its previous flight in June, SpaceX achieved its first successful Starship splashdown, a key milestone in Musk's vision of sending humans to Mars. Starship, first unveiled by Musk in 2017, had previously experienced several explosions during earlier testing phases.
As Starship reentered Earth's atmosphere horizontally, onboard cameras captured the superhot plasma enveloping the ship's Earth-facing side and its two steering flaps, creating a glowing pinkish-purple aura due to hypersonic friction.
The heat-exposed side of the ship is coated with 18,000 heat-shielding tiles, which have been improved since June, when tile damage during reentry complicated the test.
NASA is closely monitoring these developments, as a modified version of Starship is expected to serve as a lander vehicle for crewed missions to the moon under its Artemis program later this decade.
SpaceX stated that its engineers have \"spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success.\"
Teams monitored thousands of criteria on both the vehicle and the tower before attempting to catch the returning Super Heavy booster. Had conditions not been favorable, the booster would have been redirected for a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, as with previous tests.
However, after receiving the green light, the booster decelerated from supersonic speeds, and the \"chopstick arms\" successfully caught it.
This catch-landing method represents the latest achievement in SpaceX's development of a fully reusable rocket, designed to carry more cargo into orbit, ferry humans to the moon for NASA, and eventually reach Mars.
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
