The Super Heavy booster lands on the company's launch tower during Starship's fifth flight on October 13, 2024.
SpaceX
SpaceX launched its fifth test flight of its Starship rocket on Sunday, pulling off a dramatic first catch with the rocket's launch vehicle system more than 20 stories high.
The achievement represents an important milestone toward SpaceX's goal of making Starship a fully reusable rocket system.
Elon Musk's company launched Starship at 8:25 a.m. ET from its Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas. The rocket's “Super Heavy” carrier landed back on the arms of the company's launch tower nearly seven minutes after liftoff.
“Are you kidding me?” SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said on the company's webcast.
“What we just saw looked like magic,” Huot added.
SpaceX captures the “Super Heavy” first stage booster of its Starship rocket on October 13, 2024.
Sergio Flores | Afp | Getty Images
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX in a post on social media.
“As we prepare to return to the Moon under Artemis, further testing will prepare us for the bold missions ahead,” Nelson wrote.
The spacecraft separated and continued into space, circling halfway around the Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and landing in the Indian Ocean to complete the test.
There were no people on board the fifth Starship flight. Company leadership said SpaceX expects to fly hundreds of Starship missions before the rocket launches with a crew.
Read more CNBC space news
The full Starship system has already completed four spaceflight tests, with launches in April and November last year and March and June this year. Each of the test flights achieved more milestones than the last.
SpaceX emphasizes that in developing the giant rocket it is trying to “build on what we have learned from previous flights.”
SpaceX's Starship lifts off from the Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, on Oct. 13, 2024, during the rocket's fifth flight test.
Sergio Flores | Afp | Getty Images
The Starship system is fully reusable and is intended to become a new method for transporting cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also crucial to NASA's plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX received a multi-billion dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a manned lunar lander as part of NASA's Artemis lunar program.
The Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday granted SpaceX a license to launch Starship's fifth flight, earlier than the regulator previously estimated. But the company wanted to launch the fifth flight earlier than October, leading both SpaceX and Musk to be vocal in their criticism of the FAA, saying “unnecessary environmental analysis” would delay the process.
While the FAA and partner agencies at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Commerce Department's National Marine Fisheries Service completed the assessments faster than expected, SpaceX also had to pay fines to environmental regulators for unauthorized water discharges at its launch site in Texas.
Destinations for the fifth flight
The SpaceX spacecraft stands on the launch pad before its third flight test from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, March 12, 2024.
Chandan Khanna | AFP | Getty Images
With the booster catch, SpaceX has exceeded the milestones of the fourth test flight.
The company achieved its goal of returning the launch vehicle to the launch site and used the “chopstick” arms on the tower to catch the vehicle. The company sees the ambitious capture approach as crucial to its goal of making the rocket fully reusable.
“SpaceX engineers have undertaken years of preparation and months of testing for the launch vehicle launch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances of success,” the company wrote on its website.
The catch requires thousands of criteria to be met, the company explained. Had it not been ready, the launch vehicle would have deviated from the return trajectory and instead crashed offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.
“We will not accept compromises when it comes to ensuring the safety of the public and our team, and return will only be attempted if the conditions are right,” SpaceX said.
The rocket
Starship is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully loaded on the super-heavy booster, Starship stands 397 feet tall and is approximately 30 feet in diameter.
The rocket's journey into space begins with the Super Heavy booster, which is 232 feet high. At its base are 33 Raptor engines that together produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust — about double the 8.8 million pounds of thrust from NASA's Space Launch System rocket, which launched for the first time in 2022.
The 165-foot-tall spacecraft itself has six Raptor engines – three for use in Earth's atmosphere and three for operation in the vacuum of space.
The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. It takes more than 10 million pounds of fuel to launch the entire system.
Comments are closed.