SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster successfully returned to the pad after liftoff to be caught by the launch tower’s mechanical arms in an incredible feat Sunday morning. The milestone came during the fifth flight of the company’s Starship, and is a huge step for the rocket’s planned reusability. Starship launched at about 8:25AM ET from SpaceX’s Texas Starbase.
Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster! pic.twitter.com/6R5YatSVJX
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 13, 2024
Landing rockets is nothing new for SpaceX, which has now been reusing its Falcon 9 workhorse for several years, but the company took a completely different approach for recapturing Super Heavy. Whereas Falcon 9 typically lands on a drone ship out in the ocean, Super Heavy returned to its launch site and had to navigate into the narrow opening between the launch towers’ outstretched “chopsticks.” The move risked destroying the tower if Super Heavy didn’t pull it off correctly. It did, though, and live footage from the flight test shows the booster neatly parking itself back at the tower.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/tjSKNwBfrom Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics https://ift.tt/tjSKNwB
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