Starship Is Caught by Launch Pad Arms in SpaceX Milestone

• The landing was the first capture of a Starship returning from space.
• SpaceX officials said the catch demonstrated the full reusability of Starship.

SpaceX’s Starship returned to Earth on Saturday and was caught in midair by the giant mechanical arms at its launch pad, the same structure that received it 22 hours earlier.

The event represented the main objective that Elon Musk and his team had pursued: the first capture of a Starship flying back from space. After the first-stage booster was lost shortly after Friday’s liftoff from Texas, however, the company did not achieve the desired double catch.

Wreckage remained in the Gulf of Mexico and was cordoned off with buoys while the stainless steel, bullet-shaped spacecraft lowered itself upright at the launch pad.

SpaceX officials said Saturday’s catch demonstrated the full reusability of Starship, a vehicle intended for future missions to the Moon and Mars. Although Friday’s booster recovery failed, the company said it had already completed three previous booster catches, validating the technique.

NASA welcomed Saturday’s news. The space agency is paying billions of dollars for Starship to land Artemis astronauts on the Moon later this decade and to help build a permanent lunar base. Musk’s ambitions are even broader: he has said he wants to launch a fleet of Starships to build a city on Mars.

The world’s largest and most powerful rocket, a 124-meter vehicle, lifted off late Friday afternoon from SpaceX’s Starship base near the U.S.-Mexican border. It separated from its booster before issues occurred, and the upper-stage spacecraft went into orbit and released 26 advanced Starlink satellites.

Starship continued to circle the world about 165 miles (265 kilometers) above Earth, with live views of the spacecraft and Earth streaming through Starlink. The vehicle completed 14 orbits around Earth, surpassing the previous mission’s one-to-two-orbit profile.

It was SpaceX’s 15th flight of a full-scale Starship since 2023 and only its second trip to orbit. SpaceX reported that systems on the spacecraft, including its vital heat shield, appeared to work well.

For the booster, SpaceX’s Kate Tice said its engines stopped firing too soon during the return. The booster’s guidance system determined that it was not in the correct position, then initiated the planned water landing and self-destruction. Engineers are still investigating the cause.

SpaceX expects to begin launching Starships from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center within the next few months. That location is intended to serve as the starting point for NASA’s next Artemis mission, which will begin with lunar lander practice in Earth orbit before attempting a lunar landing.

For Artemis III, NASA’s four-astronaut crew is expected to dock with Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon in turn. The two companies will take turns delivering crews to the lunar surface. NASA is targeting as soon as 2028 for Artemis IV, the first crewed Moon landing since the Apollo era more than half a century earlier.

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