On a cloudy Saturday afternoon in the southern US state of Texas, a pair of large metallic arms stretched out and caught a giant in midair as it descended from the sky.
At 124 metres (407ft) tall, SpaceX’s Starship is the world’s largest and most powerful rocket, intended for travel to the Moon and Mars. Yet 22 hours after its latest blast off into space, it made history on Earth while returning, as it slipped smoothly between mechanical “chopstick arms” above Launch Pad 2 at Starbase city in Texas.
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Aerospace engineers across the globe have lauded the first-ever capture of the upper stage of a spaceship and welcomed the achievement, which signals that mega rockets could soon be fully reusable.
Here’s why the historic capture matters:
How did it work?
On Saturday, after orbiting Earth 14 times for 22.5 hours, SpaceX’s Starship emerged from thick clouds over its Starbase launch site, flipped itself to a vertical position and slowly descended into the arms on the ‘Mechazilla’ launch tower.
Like massive tweezers, the arms caught the upper stage of the spacecraft in midair, while its engines were still roaring.
The spacecraft then hooked onto the tower’s mechanical arms and shut off its engines.
The roaring sound was instantly replaced by loud cheers from watchers nearby – they had just seen for the first time in history the capture of a mega rocket.
“That was the missing link, the holy grail of spaceflight,” said SpaceX mission commentator Dan Huot. “We caught a Starship and now everything changes.”
“Congratulations to an incredible team at SpaceX!!!” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said.
NASA, which is paying billions of dollars for Starship to land astronauts on the Moon later this decade, also welcomed the achievement.
“It was almost magic,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said on X.
“Making more believers by the day…one step closer to [the moon],” he added.
Why was the capture tricky?
Spacecraft returning to Earth battle gravity and a range of atmospheric factors that are nearly impossible to perfectly predict or game.
Sputnik 1, the first-ever artificial satellite sent into space, burned up while returning to Earth.
Several manned spacecraft have been destroyed while re-entering the atmosphere, killing the astronauts on board.
In April 1967, the Soviet Union’s Soyuz 1 spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere successfully, but its parachutes failed to deploy properly. Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died in the crash-landing near the Ural mountains. Decades later, NASA’s space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry from orbit, killing all seven astronauts on board.
In recent decades, space agencies and private firms have made major advances in safety. But many spacecraft are impossible to reuse after splashing down in the sea or on land.
Since October 2024, SpaceX has on three occasions successfully caught the boosters that propel shuttles, once they have run out of fuel and separated from the main rocket.
But until now, the main spacecraft has never been successfully caught in midair.
Soon after its return, Musk and his engineers inspected the spaceship and said that everything appeared to have worked well, including its vital heat shield.
“Ship 42 looks great!” Musk wrote on X, posting photos and videos from the launch tower.
While the capture was tricky, aerospace engineers said the upper stage catch is a big success for SpaceX.
Niharika Patel, Technical Programme Manager at Loft Orbital, a US-based space infrastructure company, told Al Jazeera that watching the catch happen was “magical.”
“Landing a rocket back on Earth is incredibly difficult and can itself be considered an engineering marvel. Now add the sheer size and weight of Starship to that equation,” she said, noting that this is also the first time the upper stage booster has been successfully caught.
“It requires incredible precision to ensure the vehicle reaches exactly the right position, withstands the extreme heat of atmospheric re-entry and executes highly controlled manoeuvres within a very tight window. And all of this happens without a pilot — it’s completely autonomous,” she added.
Why does it matter for space technology advances?
SpaceX has become dominant in the aerospace industry primarily because the company has been trying to slash the cost of space travel by launching reusable rocket technology and rapid, repeat engineering.
So far, its Falcon 9 rocket has launched 700 times since 2010, with its first stage being reusable and its second stage discarded into the sea.
With Starship, Musk has said he wants to create fully reusable flights that can also transport humans into space with minimum refurbishment.
“SpaceX has already significantly reduced the cost of getting to orbit through Falcon 9’s reusability. It’s super cheap and convenient to send satellites to low Earth orbit. Starship takes this a step further by being a much bigger craft and aiming for full reusability of both the booster and the upper stage,” Patel said.
She explained that a fully reusable vehicle can be rapidly refurbished and flown again, dramatically increasing frequency and reducing cost. So if Starship reaches this milestone, Patel said it would make access to space even more affordable and scalable, just as commercial aviation transformed travel by making aircraft reusable with quick turnaround times between flights.
“This is essential for the next era of space exploration, from deploying large satellite constellations and building space infrastructure to enabling sustained human exploration of the Moon and Mars,” Patel added.
