SpaceX caught its Starship orbital vehicle Saturday night after a 22-hour flight around Earth.
The 124-meter-tall rocket launched Friday from Starbase in Texas, aiming to prove both stages of the system are fully reusable. The mission deployed 26 Starlink satellites.
SpaceX has retrieved a Starship vehicle after an orbital flight for the first time. The company has previously caught Super Heavy boosters, but catching the upper stage is far more difficult due to its higher re-entry speed and altitude.
“We have caught Starship, and it changes everything,” said Dan Huot, a SpaceX spokesperson, according to Aftenposten.
The 15th Test Flight
The flight, SpaceX’s 15th, demonstrated a critical capability but also exposed ongoing challenges. The plan called for both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage to return to the launch tower for capture. NRK reported the booster separated from Starship minutes after liftoff and was intentionally directed toward a point in the Gulf of Mexico, where it exploded upon reaching the water’s surface.
After reaching orbit and deploying its payload, it endured 14 loops around the planet before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.
A Historic Milestone
Kjellmar Oksavik, leader of the space physics group at the University of Bergen, told VG the mission was “100 percent success for the project” but noted the loss of the booster.
“This is an incredible moment! No one has previously managed to fly 14 times around the Earth and then land in the same place they took off from,”
Oksavik said.
The true test will be whether Starship can be rapidly refueled and relaunched, a key part of SpaceX’s plan to make flights cheaper and more frequent. “It is too early to say,” he added, referring to the system’s reusability.
The Artemis Program
The success is considered an important milestone for reusing rockets. The space agency has selected a version of Starship as the lunar lander for its upcoming crewed missions to the Moon. Before a lunar landing can occur, SpaceX must prove it can transfer propellant between two spacecraft in orbit, a task made easier by the successful recovery of a vehicle that has been to space.
The Guardian, as cited by VG, said that rapid reusability is central to Elon Musk’s vision for reducing the cost of space travel. By making both stages of the rocket fly again, SpaceX aims to drastically lower the expense of launching payloads to orbit and beyond.
Hurdles Ahead
Reuters reported that SpaceX requires the rocket stages to withstand multiple trips without extensive repairs.
Oksavik, speaking to VG, identified two main players in the reusable rocket race: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Musk’s SpaceX. “Starship has in a way come the furthest,” he said, “but there is still a lot of work left to be done.”
Worth a look
