SpaceX makes ‘absolutely insane’ catch of Starship’s massive Super Heavy booster

ORLANDO, Fla. – SpaceX made history Sunday on its latest test flight of Starship managing to both successfully catch the massive rocket’s Super Heavy booster back at the launch site, and return Starship to Earth for a controlled ocean landing, although one that ended with an explosion.

The rocket lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, at 8:25 a.m. EDT.

It had a successful stage separation and while Starship continued on its suborbital trip around the Earth to splash down in the Indian Ocean, teams gave the go for the booster to make its first-ever return attempt back to the pad.

That’s when the booster shot back through its own exhaust plume it had created on the flight up, coming back in a supersonic return to Earth before a series of burns to make it nearly float in place coming in for a pinpoint placement adjacent the launch tower nicknamed “Mechazilla,” which was able to swing its two support arms called “chopsticks” to safely grasp the booster in place.

“This is absolutely insane,” said SpaceX commentator Kate Tice watching amid cheers from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. “On the first-ever attempt we have successfully caught the Super Heavy booster back at the launch tower. … Folks this is a day for the engineering history books.”

This was the fifth attempt to launch the massive rocket, but first to attempt a recovery capture of the booster back at the launch site.

“Are you kidding me?” said SpaceX’s Dan Huot, who was on site in Texas. “I’m sorry, even in this day and age, what we just saw, that looked like magic. … I am like shaking right now.”

The Starship upper stage had a more successful mission completion as well armed with better heat protection for reentry than the last flight. It managed a controlled descent and vertical landing in the Indian Ocean one hour and six minutes after liftoff. Its landing was captured on both video still streaming from the Starship itself, and from video by buoys SpaceX had placed near the target landing site.

Video from the spacecraft itself showed the water on approach with waves rippling on the surface as the engines blasted, and then cameras dipping below the surface before telemetry on the live feed showed the rocket falling to its side as planned.

That’s when a massive fireball was seen from the buoy cam in the distance.

“I think it is safe to say we have a ship in the water,” Tice said. “We were not intending to recover any of the ship’s hardware, so that was the best ending we could have hoped for.”

“That broke my brain for a while,” Huot said after the landing. “Starships were meant to fly. It sure as hell flew today. So let’s get ready for the next one.”

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk chimed in after the success, posting, “SpaceX team are such great humans.”

The Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday announced it had given the OK for Starship to launch this attempt as well as future attempts with a similar launch profile from Texas after a long delay since the last Starship test mission on June 6.

Musk replied to a comment about the FAA’s delay between launches.

“That was the limiting factor and it will get far worse, potentially impossible, if the slow strangulation by overregulation continues,” he posted.

Despite the delay, the fourth flight’s booster landing attempt four months ago in the Gulf of Mexico was enough of a success in terms of controlled descent, the company opted to move to the next iterative step and attempt the first land recovery at the launch pad.

“Flight 4 was a tremendous success. A fully successful ascent was followed by the first ever booster soft-landing in the Gulf of Mexico and Starship making it through a brilliant reentry, before its own landing burn and splashdown in the Indian Ocean,” the company stated.

On that mission, the Starship was able to once again separate from its booster, and continue what became its second flight through space, but it suffered heat damage on reentry and was not able to remain intact missing its target landing in the ocean.

“Extensive upgrades ahead of this flight test have been made to hardware and software across Super Heavy, Starship, and the launch and catch tower infrastructure at Starbase,” SpaceX stated. “SpaceX engineers have 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 successful booster recovery attempt Sunday was only able to happen after both the launch tower and the booster ticked off thousands of safety items after launch and the launch director gave a verbal command to go for landing.

“We accept no compromises when it comes to ensuring the safety of the public and our team, and the return will only be attempted if conditions are right,” SpaceX stated.

The booster returned, just like the company does from Falcon 9 booster returns on the Space Coast, generating a sonic boom, but more intense because the booster is bigger that the Falcon 9 boosters.

“The returning booster will slow down from supersonic speeds, resulting in audible sonic booms in the area around the landing zone,” SpaceX stated. “Generally, the only impact to those in the surrounding area of a sonic boom is the brief thunder-like noise with variables like weather and distance from the return site determining the magnitude experienced by observers.”

For the Starship first stage, teams worked to improve its heat shield so it can survive reentry better than it fared on the fourth test launch.

It features newer-generation tiles, a backup ablative layer and other protections between the spacecraft’s flap structures.

“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,” SpaceX stated. “By continuing to push our hardware in a flight environment, and doing so as safely and frequently as possible, we’ll rapidly bring Starship online and revolutionize humanity’s ability to access space.”

The massive rocket became the most powerful to ever achieve orbit during a March launch with its 33 Raptor engines generating more than 16 million pounds of thrust on liftoff. This was its third trip making it to space. The first two Starship launch attempts in 2023 ended explosively without achieving orbit.

The rocket is 396 feet tall and has attempted all of its launches from SpaceX’s Texas launch site so far.

While test flights will continue there, SpaceX plans to potentially build Starship launch sites at both Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The FAA and the Department of the Air Force are both heading up environmental impact studies to gauge the effect of launching what is the most powerful rocket to ever make it to orbit from the two Space Coast sites.

NASA has a vested interest in SpaceX succeeding with its next-generation rocket, a version of which is tasked with bringing the astronauts on NASA’s Artemis III mission down to the surface of the moon. That mission is still aiming for late 2026, but could be delayed if Starship isn’t at full speed by then.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson weighed in after the latest mission completion, posting congratulations to SpaceX on X.

“As we prepare to go back to the moon under #Artemis, continued testing will prepare us for the bold missions that lie ahead – including to the South Pole region of the moon and then on to Mars,” he posted.