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SpaceX Starship Successfully Caught by Launch Tower After Orbital Flight
Confirmed
In Short: SpaceX officials announced a significant milestone in spaceflight on Saturday, as the Starship spacecraft was successfully caught by mechanical arms at the launch site in Texas, marking the first time a spacecraft has been caught midair after returning from orbit.
SpaceX Catches Starship at Launch Tower After Orbital Flight. First Alert 6
SpaceX officials announced a significant milestone in spaceflight on Saturday, as the Starship spacecraft was successfully caught by mechanical arms at the launch site in Texas, marking the first time a spacecraft has been caught midair after returning from orbit.
The Starship, standing at 124 meters (407 feet) tall, is the world's largest and most powerful rocket, designed for missions to the Moon and Mars.
During its test flight, the spacecraft separated neatly from its booster and soared into orbit, releasing 26 advanced Starlink satellites.
Starship completed 14 orbits around Earth, traveling at speeds of up to 17,600 mph, before returning to Earth.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman praised the achievement, calling it 'almost magic,' while SpaceX founder Elon Musk congratulated his team.
The spacecraft was caught by mechanical arms above Launch Pad 2 in Texas, demonstrating the full reusability of the Starship, which is crucial for rapid, low-cost recycling.
SpaceX reported that everything on the spacecraft, including its vital heat shield, appeared to work well, though its engines stopped firing too soon during descent.
SpaceX expects to begin launching Starships from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center within the next few months.
The successful catch is a critical step for SpaceX's ambitions to make Starship a reliable and fully reusable rocket, with plans to use it for missions to colonize Mars.
The company also noted that one Starship rocket can carry up to 60 Starlink v3 satellites, contributing to its commercial satellite internet network.
SpaceX's Starship is not only larger than the Falcon 9 but was designed from the start to be fully reusable, setting it apart from previous rockets.
NASA is paying billions of dollars for Starship to land Artemis astronauts on the Moon later this decade, underscoring the importance of the spacecraft's reliability and reusability.
What this adds
The successful catch of the Starship marks a significant step towards SpaceX's goal of making space travel more affordable and sustainable.
What's confirmed
- SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft has returned to Earth, caught midair by giant mechanical arms where its journey began 22 hours earlier.
- Soon afterwards, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk congratulated his “incredible team”.
- NASA, which is paying billions of dollars for Starship to land Artemis astronauts on the Moon later this decade, welcomed the achievement.
- SpaceX expects to begin launching Starships from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center within the next few months.
- SpaceX reported that everything on the spacecraft, including its vital heat shield, appeared to work well.
- SpaceX’s Kate Tice said its engines stopped firing too soon on the way back down.
What's still developing
- The spaceship emerged from a cloudy sky on Saturday, descending slowly over Starbase before slipping smoothly between mechanical “chopstick arms” above Launch Pad 2 in Texas – the first-ever capture of a Starship flying back from space.
- The milestone came roughly 22 hours after Starship launched Friday from SpaceX's Starbase facility, although the company fell short of its goal of recovering both stages of the rocket after its Super Heavy booster exploded over the Gulf of America.
- It announced itself with a sonic boom, swung around South Padre Island and slowed itself with a belly flop-like maneuver before the launch tower in Starbase caught it around 3:20 p.m.
- The test flight, called Flight 13, hit several key milestones before concluding with a controlled splashdown of the upper Starship spacecraft in the Indian Ocean.
- NASA lays out a packed 14-day schedule for Artemis III The mission, scheduled for the summer of 2027, will include be pivotal in deciding whether SpaceX or Blue Origin supplies the lunar lander for the first crewed trip to the lunar surface in decades An artist’s concept shows SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (Starship HLS) docking directly to an Orion spacecraft.
Sources
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