SpaceX has taken a dramatic leap towards its dream of placing the first humans on Mars after the company successfully returned a 232-foot-tall (71-metre) booster to its launchpad on its first attempt.
The Super Heavy booster was successfully caught by ‘chopsticks’ 6 minutes 56 seconds after launch. Courtesy: SpaceX
The Starship Super Heavy Test Flight 5 (IFT-5) (Ship 30 upper stage and Booster 12) was launched from Starbase, Boco Chica Beach, Brownsville, Texas, on 13 October at 1225 GMT. It marked the fifth flight test of a SpaceX Starship vehicle. The launch was not the main event though, as became abundantly clear after the Super Heavy booster successfully separated from the upper spacecraft.
The booster cascaded towards Earth but as it came closer, it appeared to glide down in a controlled manner towards a landing structure. As planned, it was caught mid-air next to the launch tower with what SpaceX calls “chopsticks” (a pair of metal pincers), 6 minutes 56 seconds after launch and amid a loud chorus of cheers in the background of the live webcast.
While history was being written at the launch site, the Starship upper stage had fired up its six engines and continued its journey. After re-entry and a chance to test its new heat-shield configuration, the rocket headed to the Indian Ocean where it flipped, performed a landing burn and completed a soft splashdown at T+65:42, then exploded. It was reported that there was still some burn through on at least one of the forward flaps during re-entry.
Update on 29 October: The historic moment could have looked very different. The Super Heavy booster was a mere second away from being instructed to abort the landing and to crash into a patch of ground nearby, according to SpaceX engineers. In a conversation on 25 October, they explained to Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, what was going on behind the scenes. Musk revealed the dramatic account in a post on X (showing his screen while playing Diablo IV (an online game):
“We had a misconfigured spin gas abort that didn’t have quite the right ramp-up time for bringing up spin pressure,” an unnamed engineer told Musk.” And we were one second away from that tripping and telling the rocket to abort and try to crash into the ground next to the tower instead of [landing at] the tower – like, erroneously tell a healthy rocket to not try that catch.”
The conversation went on to reveal some details about the damage sustained by Super Heavy during its test flight: a cover on the booster called a chine, designed to protect a longitudinal structure, came off during its descent.
“We were worried about these spot-weld margins on chine skin before flight,” one of the engineers said. “We wouldn’t have predicted the exact right place, but this cover that ripped off was right on top of a bunch of the single-point-failure valves that must work during the landing burn. Thankfully, none of those or the harnessing got damaged, but we ripped this chine cover off over some really critical equipment right as landing burn was starting. We have a plan to address that.”
Comment by Farah Ghouri:
Many analysts were sceptical of SpaceX’s plan to capture the Starship booster. More power to Musk, it has to be said. To get it so right on the first attempt is a feat that should be applauded. Still, the real test will come with proving that this is not just a one-off triumph but repeatable and reliable. For now though, SpaceX engineers can give themselves a well-deserved pat on the back for making a dream a reality – and a beautiful spectacle to behold.
