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SpaceX catches a returning Starship spacecraft with the tower’s “chopsticks” for the first time, after the booster catch was aborted

What happened
On Starship’s 15th test the Ship came back from a day in orbit and slipped between the launch tower’s arms, SCMP reports; the booster’s catch was aborted on Friday.
Why it matters
It is the first recovery of a spaceship this way, a big step towards a fully reusable rocket that could make frequent, cheap launches possible.
What’s next
Engineers are still looking for the root cause of the booster abort; SpaceX’s aim remains catching both stages on one flight.

How this story developed

  1. 13:21First report
  2. 00:052nd source
  3. 00:05Confirmed
  4. 00:323rd source
  5. 00:39Updated
  1. 13:21First reportFrance 24
  2. 00:052nd sourceBBC News World
  3. 00:05ConfirmedWas: Single source
  4. 00:323rd sourceSouth China Morning Post
  5. 00:39LatestUpdatedSpaceX caught the returning Ship with the tower’s arms, SCMP reported.
Full story

The Ship comes home

SpaceX on Saturday carried out the first-ever recovery of a spaceship, the South China Morning Post reported. Its Starship vessel returned safely to its launch pad at Starbase in Texas after a day in orbit, emerging from a cloudy sky after a descent across the continent and slipping smoothly between the mechanical “chopstick arms” above Launch Pad 2.

Catching the Ship is far harder than catching the booster, because it falls much faster and from much higher. To reach the Texas coast it had to fly over the whole continent, then make what France 24 called a “giant swoosh maneuver” around the cities of the Rio Grande Valley. “Once the rocket is flying over land, there’s 21 minutes where the operators can’t do anything,” the senior SpaceX engineer Lars Blackmore said before the landing.

The booster that got away

The 15th test flight of Starship, the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket, lifted off from Starbase in Boca Chica at 16:47 local time on Friday, France 24 and the BBC reported. The plan was the first “double catch” of both the Super Heavy booster and the Ship.

That slipped out of reach within minutes. After the two stages separated, the booster’s guidance, navigation and control system aborted the catch, even though mission control had first given a “go”, the BBC reported. Super Heavy diverted to the Gulf of Mexico, hovered above the water and self-destructed in a fireball. SpaceX had caught it three times on earlier flights.

“The booster was not in the place that it was supposed to be to proceed with the catch.”

Dan Huot, SpaceX spokesman, France 24

The Ship meanwhile reached orbit, deployed 26 Starlink satellites and circled the Earth on a flight of about 22 hours, France 24 reported.

Why it matters

Full reuse of both stages is SpaceX’s long-held aim. Its Falcon 9 boosters, first landed in 2015, now fly more than 100 times a year, the BBC noted. “Full reusability has the potential to fundamentally change the economics of accessing space,” Malcolm Macdonald, president of the Royal Aeronautical Society, told the BBC before the landing. Starship’s progress also matters for NASA’s plan to land astronauts on the Moon in 2028.