Sunday was a day for the history books at Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The company’s Starship spacecraft successfully completed its planned flight, before its Super Heavy rocket was remarkably caught by mechanical arms known as Mechazilla.
The historic feat drew praise from astronauts and space experts, topping a successful fifth test flight for the uncrewed Starship, which blasted off from the Boca Chica starbase.
Things went well from the start. Starship successfully executed a hot-stage separation, igniting its six Raptor engines, and arriving in outer space.
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The spacecraft followed its planned trajectory in space, before reentering Earth’s atmosphere, executing a flip, and a landing burn. It then splashed into the target area in the Indian Ocean, thus concluding the flight test just over one hour after it began.
SpaceX staff erupted in cheers and applause as the falling booster reignited three of its Raptor engines, slowed its rapid descent and swung towards the “mechazilla” launch tower, where it was held fast by the mechanical arms, labelled “chopsticks”.
It is the first time SpaceX has attempted the bold manoeuvre, which it sees as crucial to its goal of developing fully reusable rockets capable of ferrying humans, scientific equipment and supplies to the moon and to Mars.
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While Sunday’s events marked Starship’s fifth test flight, it was the first time SpaceX attempted to execute the catch of the Super Heavy rocket booster. It turns out SpaceX didn’t need more than one chance to do just that successfully. The so-called “chopstick arms” of the launch and catch tower perfectly caught the booster.
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