SpaceX caught its Super Heavy booster in mid-air using a pair of metal “wandstick” arms, the first time such a maneuver has been successfully completed. Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX’s Starship program, responsible for developing the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown, continues to make history.
On Sunday, Starship and the Super Heavy booster lifted off around 8:25 a.m. EST from SpaceX’s Starbase launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, for the rocket’s fifth suborbital test flight. But instead of crashing into the Gulf of Mexico, as on the previous flight, the Super Heavy was caught in mid-air by a pair of metallic “wand” arms that the company calls “Mechazilla.”
It is the first time such a maneuver has been successfully completed and represents the program’s most ambitious milestone to date.
“The entire SpaceX team should be proud of the engineering feat they just accomplished,” the company said in a post-launch update. “The world witnessed what the future will look like when Starship begins carrying crew and cargo to destinations on Earth, the Moon, Mars and beyond.”
Built to last
As SpaceX alluded to, the Starship — which stands nearly 400 feet (122 meters) tall when stacked on Super Heavy — was designed to one day ferry humans across the solar system.
The company is also working under a $4 billion contract with NASA to develop two variants of the Starship Human Landing System (HLS) that will return Americans to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo missions. The HLS will fly for the first time on Artemis 3, which is tentatively scheduled for September 2026, and will land NASA astronauts at the lunar south pole.
To develop such a vehicle, SpaceX will have to launch Starship hundreds of times. And to do this, both the rocket and the booster will have to be reversed quickly. SpaceX then designed both components to be fully reusable. That makes Sunday’s mission, which returned Super Heavy to its launch pad intact, a key piece of validation.
“Congratulations to @SpaceX on the successful capture of the booster and Starship’s fifth flight test today!” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a post on Mars.”
After takeoff, the Super Heavy separated from the spacecraft and reversed course towards Earth, descending at supersonic speed. The booster then fired a handful of engines to apply the brakes, slowing to a hover before Mechazilla plucked it from the sky about seven minutes into the mission. It was a successful landing and the first time the booster had launched and returned to the same platform. SpaceX captured the moment in real time.
“Thousands of distinct vehicle and platform criteria must be met before a return and capture attempt of the Super Heavy booster, which will require healthy systems on the booster and tower and a manual command from the mission flight director,” he said SpaceX in a post about X.
Super Heavy is significantly larger than SpaceX’s ubiquitous Falcon 9 rocket, which has successfully landed hundreds of times both on land and at sea. And because it doesn’t have landing legs, SpaceX was forced to get creative.
The company achieved its goal extraordinarily quickly. The previous test of the Starship and Super Heavy integrated booster, Flight 4, was a huge step forward, as the booster landed “within an accuracy of half a centimeter,” according to Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability . Previous missions, however, completely lost the booster.
According to Dan Huot, a SpaceX communications manager in Sunday’s live feed, “We will start looking very soon when we can capture a [Starship].”
The spacecraft, meanwhile, completed its objectives, performing hot phase separation, ignition and ascent into space. It skirted about half the planet before re-entering the atmosphere, turning around and making a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. A photo buoy also captured that moment.
As on Flight 4, the Super Heavy rolled over and sank into the ocean. This time, however, SpaceX has upgraded the Starship’s thermal systems for reentry, where conditions are hot enough to envelop the rocket in plasma. The upgrade appeared to prevent the loss of flaps and other hardware that had been jettisoned previously.
“We had no intention of recovering the ship’s hardware, so this was the best ending we could hope for,” SpaceX engineer Kate Tice said during Sunday’s livestream.
Under review
SpaceX says it plans to produce thousands of Starships a year at its million-square-foot Starfactory facility. But the company is frustrated with the pace of the FAA’s launch licensing process, going so far as to air its complaints publicly.
The FAA took longer to review the fifth flight’s mission profile.
“SpaceX’s current license authorizing the launch of the Starship 4 flight also allows for multiple flights with the same vehicle configuration and mission profile,” an agency spokesperson said FLY last month. “SpaceX chose to modify both for the proposed Starship 5 flight launch, which triggered a more thorough review.”
The FAA evaluated a new splashdown site in the Gulf of Mexico and what it expected would be an unusually large sonic boom during booster landing, requiring respective 60-day consultations with the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service . It also proposed more than $630,000 in fines against SpaceX for allegedly violating the terms of its license during two previous missions, neither of which involved Starship.
According to FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker, the measures are “necessary” for safety. SpaceX has a decidedly different perspective. It says the agency reported a September timeline for Flight 5 that was later revised to late November. The launch license approval on Saturday therefore came as a surprise.
“We continue to be stuck in a reality where it takes longer to do the government paperwork to authorize a rocket launch than it does to design and build the actual hardware,” SpaceX said in a September update. “This should never happen and directly threatens America’s position as a leader in space.”
SpaceX is also under scrutiny for failing to contain a liquid oxygen spill at the starbase in violation of the Clean Water Act, the EPA said. FLY last month. The company received a $150,000 fine but denied discharging anything other than normal drinking water.
What’s the next step?
If it sticks to the Flight 5 mission profile for the next Starship test, SpaceX will be able to launch under its current license.
But if the company makes significant changes – as it is inclined to do, given that each mission has been more ambitious than the last – it could become embroiled in another feud with the FAA.
Starship’s debut crewed flight is set to be the third mission in the Polaris program, a series of private flights purchased by SpaceX from billionaire CEO Jared Isaacman, the first of which ended last month. Before then, SpaceX plans to fly hundreds of uncrewed missions. CEO Elon Musk even said last month that the company plans to launch routine missions to Mars with uncrewed spacecraft within two years.
NASA has estimated that the spacecraft will require about 15 test flights before the HLS spacecraft is ready to return humans to the Moon. The next step for SpaceX will be to validate orbital flight (all Starship missions so far have been suborbital) and demonstrate orbital maneuvers such as propellant transfer. That’s exactly what the company plans to do as early as next year, launching twin spaceships that will pair and transfer fuel from one to the other.
The Starship is loaded with about 10 million pounds of propellant, generating about 17 million pounds of thrust from its 13 Raptor engines. It boasts greater fuel capacity than any modern technology. But to give it enough energy to fly to the Moon and back, it will have to refuel at an orbital propellant depot. To meet the Artemis III deadline, NASA will need Starship to complete several missions to refuel. Officials are contemplating alternative mission profiles in case there isn’t enough time.
“The stimulant is how quickly SpaceX can launch the systems that can power the repository,” Lori Glaze, acting deputy associate administrator of NASA’s Exploration Directorate, said earlier this month.
To achieve that goal, SpaceX is developing a second launch pad at Starbase. The company also seeks to launch and recover rockets from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which could increase Starship’s cadence.
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared on FLY.
