image copyrightSpaceX
SpaceX successfully recovered the top of its massive Starship rocket for the first time, after a 22 and a half hour flight.
The ship returned to Earth and hovered near its launch tower, whose mechanical arms, nicknamed "chopsticks," grabbed and secured it.
The company had hoped to capture the bottom of the rocket as well, but that plan was aborted just minutes after launch on Friday.
SpaceX, billionaire Elon Musk's company, needs to be able to reliably recover both parts of the Starship system to fly repeatedly and drastically reduce costs.
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The return of the ship to the Starbase launch pad, in Boca Chica (Texas), unleashed a cheer among SpaceX employees who were following the flight.
This is Starship's 15th test and the first in which both parts of the rocket were expected to be fully recovered. SpaceX wants both the upper and lower sections to be fully reusable.
The 124-meter-tall rocket successfully lifted off from the Starbase launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, at 4:47 p.m. local time on Friday.
The plan was to grab the bottom of the rocket, the Super Heavy booster, six and a half minutes later when it returned.
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But the booster triggered an automatic abort and veered toward the ocean, where it hovered above the water before exploding.
Elon Musk later posted on X that the booster was "slightly low on fuel."
image source, Reuters
The upper part of the rocket continued its journey into space, where it deployed 26 satellites that are part of the Starlink constellation, which provides high-speed internet.
The spacecraft completed 14 orbits around Earth before returning to the launch tower.
SpaceX had managed to capture the Super Heavy booster on three previous test flights.
But this is the first time that the top of the rocket, which first reached orbit in September, is held by the "chopsticks."
Before the flight, SpaceX stated that it would only attempt to capture the craft after carefully evaluating the vehicle while it was in space.
Any problems would have caused it to sink into the ocean in the same way as the booster.
The dream of a reusable rocket
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Building a fully reusable rocket is an ambition SpaceX has long pursued.
In 2015, it became the first company to achieve vertical landing of part of a rocket with its Falcon 9 booster.
Falcon 9 rockets now fly more than 100 times a year and the ability to reuse the bottom of the rocket has dramatically reduced launch costs.
Getting a full Starship rocket to land would take spaceflight to the next level, says Professor Malcolm Macdonald, president of the Royal Aeronautical Society, but this time it didn't happen.
Not having recovered the propellant is a setback. However, they have done this before, so the return and successful recovery of the other party represents substantial progress.
Now, the company has proven to master both parts of the recovery challenge, although not yet on the same flight. The next milestone would be to combine those achievements and demonstrate that they can do it reliably, repeatedly and economically.
Following SpaceX's IPO earlier this year, its shareholders are closely monitoring these flights, as is NASA.
Starship's progress has direct implications for NASA's attempt to land humans on the Moon in 2028, a highly ambitious deadline.
SpaceX versus Blue Origin
SpaceX received a contract from NASA to adapt the spacecraft as the lander that would ultimately take astronauts to the lunar surface.
But it is not the only company that works with NASA. Blue Origin, owned by tech billionaire Jeff Bezos, also has a contract to use its New Glenn rocket and lander for the moon landing.
Both companies will also play a key role in the Artemis III mission, currently scheduled for summer 2027, marking another demanding schedule.
During the trip, four astronauts aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft will maneuver to approach the SpaceX and Blue Origin lunar modules and attempt to connect to them.
Starship will have to make a lot of progress in the coming months to meet those commitments; The pace of rocket development has been much slower than SpaceX anticipated.
But Blue Origin also has a lot of work ahead of it. The company suffered a major setback earlier this year when its rocket exploded, completely destroying its launch pad in Florida.
Blue Origin had announced that its spacecraft would be operational again later this year, but the return to flight has been delayed until early 2027.
NASA is also under pressure to meet its deadlines. Its administrator, Jared Isaacman, pointed out that the United States competes with China to reach the Moon. China plans to have its "taikonauts" land on the lunar surface by 2030.
This article was originally written in English and we used an artificial intelligence tool to translate it. A BBC journalist reviewed the text before publication. Learn more about how we use AI.
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