SpaceX Captures Giant Starship Boosters During Historic Flight 5 Rocket Launch and Landing (Video)

The largest and most powerful rocket ever built has taken to the skies again. And this time it came back.

SpaceX launched its 400-foot (122-meter) spacecraft for the fifth time ever today (Oct. 13), sending the giant rocket into the air from its starbase in South Texas at 8:25 a.m. EDT (1225 GMT).

The mission aimed to break new ground for Starship and space travel in general: SpaceX planned to return Starship's giant first stage booster, known as Super Heavy, directly to its launch mount and connect it to the “chopstick” arms of the Starship the launch tower in a courageous and unprecedented maneuver. And that's exactly what happened. About seven minutes after launch, SpaceX's Super Heavy performed an apparent bullseye landing and hovered near the Mechazilla launch tower when it captured it in its metal arms.

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Starship's Super Heavy Booster is attacked during the Starship Flight 5 test on the launch pad at Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, on October 13, 2024.(Image credit: Sergio Flores/AFP via Getty Images)

“This is a day for the engineering history books,” Kate Tice, SpaceX manager of quality systems engineering, said during live commentary as SpaceX employees shouted and cheered behind her at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California. “This is absolutely crazy! On the very first attempt we managed to catch the Super Heavy booster on the launch tower.”

“Are you kidding me!” SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot added from the launch site. “Even in this day and age, what we just saw looked like magic.”

Catching the launch vehicle wasn't the only goal of Flight 5. SpaceX also aimed to launch Starship's 165-foot (50 m) upper stage – known as Starship or simply Ship – into space and bring it back to Earth under water to bring the Indian Ocean. This happened about 65 minutes after launch, when the ship fired three of its six engines to hover over the ocean before tipping over and exploding.

“That was incredible,” Tice said. “We didn’t plan on reclaiming anything from Starship, so this was the best ending we could have hoped for.”

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk agreed.

“Today a big step towards multiplanetary life was taken,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter) after landing.

A huge moon and Mars rocket

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SpaceX's Starship Flight 5 will launch on October 13, 2024 for a suborbital test flight from Starbase in South Texas. — SpaceX's Starship Flight 5 rocket and booster lift off from the Starbase.(Image credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX is developing a spacecraft to help humanity colonize the Moon and Mars, among other exploration feats. The vehicle is designed to be fully and quickly reusable (as demonstrated by the Super Heavy landing plan with launch vehicle, which will reduce the time between flights). This feature, combined with Starship's unprecedented performance, could revolutionize space travel, according to the company and its founder Elon Musk.

Related: Starship and Super Heavy explained

NASA is convinced of the vehicle and has selected it as the first manned lander for its Artemis lunar exploration program. If all goes according to plan, Starship will land NASA astronauts on Earth's nearest neighbor for the first time as part of the Artemis 3 mission, scheduled to launch in September 2026.

SpaceX aims to get Starship up and running in time to meet these deadlines using its usual development strategy – optimizing the vehicle, testing those optimizations on test flights, and then repeating the process. In fact, the Flight 5 Starship featured some significant modifications compared to its predecessors.

“One of the key improvements to Starship before flight was a complete overhaul of its heat shield, with SpaceX engineers spending more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with newer generation tiles, an ablative backup layer and additional protections between the flaps Structures,” SpaceX wrote in a Flight 5 mission description.

Starship's previous four test flights took place in April and November 2023 and March and June of this year.

The rocket's performance improved with each successive flight. For example, the debut mission only lasted four minutes; SpaceX ordered a detonation high in the Texas sky after Starship's two stages failed to separate. But Flight 4, which took off on June 6, was a complete success; The ship reached orbital speed and both it and Super Heavy survived their return to Earth, landing in the designated water zones.

The waiting game

A massive SpaceX spacecraft takes off as spectators watch from nearby boats in a bay

The SpaceX spacecraft lifts off from the Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, on October 13, 2024, for the Starship Flight 5 test. (Image credit: Sergio Flores/AFP via Getty Images)

If SpaceX had its way, Flight 5 probably would have been on the books two months ago; The company said Starship would be technically operational in early August.

However, launches require approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the agency needed more time before giving the green light for this launch. In fact, the FAA said last month that it does not expect to receive approval for Flight 5 before the end of November.

The FAA explained its reasoning in an emailed statement to Space.com on September 11th.

“SpaceX’s current license authorizing the launch of Starship Flight 4 also allows for multiple flights using the same vehicle configuration and mission profile. SpaceX chose to change both for the planned launch of Starship Flight 5, triggering greater scrutiny,” agency officials wrote.

Views of a SpaceX Flight 5 spacecraft re-entering Earth's atmosphere surrounded by glowing red plasma.

A view of a SpaceX Flight 5 spacecraft re-entering Earth's atmosphere, surrounded by glowing red plasma. (Image credit: SpaceX)

“In addition, SpaceX submitted new information in mid-August detailing how the environmental impacts of Flight 5 will affect a larger area than previously studied,” they added. “This requires the FAA to consult other authorities.”

SpaceX was not happy with the news. On September 10, the company published a blog post titled “Starships Are Meant to Fly,” which claimed that the FAA had previously provided SpaceX with an estimate for approval of Flight 5 in mid-September. The document also expressed frustration with the FAA's pace and process, as well as the launch industry's regulations in general.

Views of a SpaceX Flight 5 spacecraft re-entering Earth's atmosphere surrounded by glowing red plasma.

This SpaceX video still shows several images of the four flaps of SpaceX's Starship Flight 5 spacecraft, with one of them (top left) showing signs of burnout during re-entry, but not as severe as on Flight 4. (Image credit: SpaceX)

The Flight 5 delay “was not due to new safety concerns, but rather was due to unnecessary environmental analysis,” SpaceX wrote in the post.

“We are delaying for unreasonable and annoying reasons,” the company added. “Unfortunately, we continue to be stuck in a reality where it takes longer to complete the government paperwork to license a rocket launch than it does to design and build the actual hardware,” the company added. “This should never happen and represents a direct threat to America’s leadership in space.”

On the left, a SpaceX spacecraft wing glowing red during re-entry. On the right a fireball at night after splashdown.

On the left, a SpaceX spacecraft wing glowing red during re-entry. On the right a fireball at night after splashdown. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Ultimately, the late November estimate for Flight 5 proved pessimistic.

And one can assume that SpaceX wants to launch another Starship mission relatively soon. Last month, SpaceX conducted a static burn using the Flight 6 naval vehicle – a common pre-launch test in which a rocket's engines are fired while it remains anchored to the ground.

And after that there will be more test missions; SpaceX always has a few Starships in the queue and is always itching to fly.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:35 a.m. EDT to include new quotes, videos and images for Starship Flight 5's successful takeoff and landing test flight.

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