SpaceX pulls off mid-air launch pad capture of descending Super Heavy booster

Super Heavy Booster 12 returns to the pad it launched from just seven minutes earlier. Image: Adam Bernstein / Spaceflight Now.

In one of the most dramatic, high-risk space flights to date, SpaceX launched a gargantuan Super Heavy-Starship rocket on an unpiloted test flight Sunday and then used giant “mechazilla” robot arms on the pad gantry to pluck the returning first stage out of the sky in an unprecedented feat of engineering.

The Starship upper stage, meanwhile, looped around the planet and re-entered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean as planned, enduring temperatures nearing 3,000 degrees as it descended to a controlled, on-target splashdown.

The spacecraft appeared to come through the hellish heat of re-entry in relatively good condition, protected by improved heat-shield tiles and beefed up steering fins that worked as needed while engulfed in a fireball of atmospheric friction.

But the jaw-dropping first stage capture back at the launch pad, using pincer-like arms more familiarly known as chopsticks, was the clear highlight of the giant rocket’s fifth test flight.

Snagging the descending 23-story-tall Super Heavy booster with the mechazilla arms represented an unprecedented milestone in SpaceX’s drive to develop fully reusable, quickly re-launchable rockets, a technological tour de force that stands alone in the history of earlier space programs relying on expendable, throw-away rockets.

“Big step towards making life multiplanetary was made today,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk said on his social media platform X.

The Starship vehicle climbs away from Starbase, Texas, under the power of 33 Raptor engines. Image: Adam Bernstein / Spaceflight Now.

The 397-foot-tall rocket blasted off from SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas, flight facility on the Texas Gulf Coast at 8:25 a.m. EDT, putting on a spectacular sunrise show as the booster’s 33 methane-burning Raptor engines ignited with a ground-shaking roar and a torrent of flaming exhaust.

Three minutes and 40 seconds after liftoff, the Super Heavy booster fell away, flipped around and restarted 13 Raptors to reverse course and head back toward the Texas coast as the Starship upper stage continue the climb to space on the power of its six Raptor engines.

The booster’s flight computer was programmed to direct the stage to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico if any problems developed on the rocket or the launch pad capture mechanism.

But no such problems were detected, the flight director sent a required “go” command and the Super Heavy continued toward its launch pad, descending at an angle and then straightening up as it approached the gantry. As it slowly dropped beside the tower, the two mechanical arms smoothly moved in to grab the rocket as its engines shut down.

Booster 12 makes a controlled descent as it returns to the launch site. Image: Adam Bernstein / Spaceflight Now.

The remarkable capture, a key element in Musk’s drive to achieve “rapid reusability,” came as the Starship upper stage was still heading to space and splashdown in the Indian Ocean, simulating a touchdown on shore or, eventually, on the moon or Mars.

During the rocket’s fourth test flight in June, the extreme temperatures caused significant damage to the Starship’s protective tiles and steering fins. Multiple upgrades and improvements were put in place for Sunday’s flight to eliminate or minimize any such re-entry damage.

As the Starship re-entered the atmosphere, cameras on the rocket showed the reddish glow of heat building up on the belly of the spacecraft, intensifying as the descent continued. Engulfed in a fireball, the ship’s fins stayed intact and the vehicle came through peak heating in good condition.

Moments later, the cameras captured an on-target splashdown followed by what appeared to be an explosion. Given the rocket is not intended to land in water, whatever happened after splashdown was incidental in what can only be called a remarkably successful test flight.

The two-stage Super Heavy-Starship, known collectively as the Starship, is the largest, most powerful rocket in the world with twice the liftoff thrust of NASA’s legendary Saturn 5 and nearly twice the power of the agency’s new Space Launch System moon rocket.

The 30-foot-wide Super Heavy first stage, loaded with 6.8 million pounds of liquid oxygen and methane propellants, stands 230 feet tall and is powered by 33 SpaceX-designed Raptor engines generating up to 16 million pounds of thrust. The Starship upper stage measures 160 feet long and carries 2.6 million pounds of propellant to power another six Raptors.

Both stages are designed to be fully reusable, with the Super Heavy flying itself back to its launch pad while the Starship travels to and from Earth orbit, the moon or, eventually, Mars. The Starship is designed to touch down vertically on its own rocket power at landing sites on Earth and beyond.

But the primary goal of Sunday’s flight was to demonstrate the ability to capture returning Super Heavy boosters on the launch pad where they can be quickly refurbished, refueled and relaunched.

SpaceX perfected first stage landings with its workhorse Falcon 9 rockets, successfully recovering 352 such boosters to date with powered touchdowns on landing pads or off-shore droneships. The smaller Falcon 9 first stages land on their own, deploying four landing legs a few seconds before touchdown.

Snatching the 397-foot-tall Super Heavy out of the sky with mechanical arms as the rocket descends and hovers right beside its launch gantry seemed an outlandish idea when it was first proposed during the booster’s initial development.

But SpaceX engineers “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,” the company said on its website.

“With each flight building on the learnings from the last, testing improvements in hardware and operations across every facet of Starship, we’re on the verge of demonstrating techniques fundamental to Starship’s fully and rapidly reusable design,” the company continued.

SpaceX is under contract to NASA to supply a modified Starship to carry astronauts to landings near the moon’s south pole in the agency’s Artemis program.

To get a Starship lander to the moon, SpaceX must first get it into low-Earth orbit, then launch multiple Super Heavy-Starship “tankers” to refuel the moon-bound Starship for the trip to lunar orbit.

The astronauts will launch atop NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and fly to the moon aboard a Lockheed Martin-built Orion capsule. The crew will transfer to the waiting Starship for the descent to the lunar surface. NASA hopes to send the first woman and the next man to the moon in the 2027-28 timeframe, after an unpiloted Starship moon landing.

Rapid reusability is a key element of the program given the number of Super Heavy-Starships that will be required for a single moon landing. While Sunday’s test flight appeared to go smoothly, multiple flights will be needed to perfect the system and demonstrate the reliability required to carry astronauts.

How long that might take is an open question.

Over the past few weeks, Musk has launched a social media broadside against the Federal Aviation Administration, complaining that the agency’s bureaucracy takes too long to review and approve launch licenses and is, in effect, stifling innovation and slowing development of the new rocket system.

The FAA did not grant a license to launch Sunday’s test flight until the day before. But this time around, the license covered multiple test flights using roughly the same flight plan.