SpaceX launched its 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Starship vehicle for the fifth time ever today (Oct. 13), sending the giant rocket aloft from its Starbase site in South Texas at 8:25 am. EDT (1225 GMT; 7:25 a.m. local Texas time).
The mission aimed to break new ground for Starship, and for spaceflight in general: SpaceX planned to return Starship’s huge first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, directly to its launch mount, catching it with the “chopstick” arms of the launch tower in a bold and unprecedented maneuver.
This is a day for the engineering history books,” Kate Tice, SpaceX manager of Quality Systems Engineering, said during live commentary as SpaceX employees screamed and cheered at the company’s Hawthorne, California headquarters behind her. “This is absolutely insane! On the first-ever attempt, we have successfully caught the Super Heavy booster back at the launch tower.”
And that’s exactly what happened. About seven minutes after liftoff, SpaceX’s Super Heavy executed what appeared to be a bull’s-eye landing, hovering near the Mechazilla launch tower as the tower captured it with its metal arms.
Are you kidding me?” SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot added from the launch site. “Even in this day and age, what we just saw — that looked like magic.”
The booster catch was not the only goal for Flight 5. SpaceX also aimed to send Starship’s 165-foot-tall (50 m) upper stage — known as Starship, or simply Ship — to space and bring it back to Earth with a splashdown in the Indian Ocean. That occurred about 65 minutes after liftoff, with the Ship firing three of its six engines to hover over the ocean before tipping over and exploding.
Leave a Reply