SpaceX shares dramatic images of Sunday’s historic Starship mission

SpaceX has shared some dramatic close-up pictures of the 70-meter-tall Super Heavy booster at the start and finish of its historic test flight on Sunday in which the rocket was brought safely back to Earth for the first time.

The photos show the Super Heavy’s Raptor engines lit up during the launch at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, as the vehicle launched on its fifth test flight, and also as it came in to land — secured by giant mechanical arms on the launchpad — about seven minutes after launch.

SpaceX described the fifth test flight of the Starship — comprising the first-stage Super Heavy booster and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft — as its “most ambitious” to date “as we work to demonstrate techniques fundamental to Starship and Super Heavy’s fully and rapidly reusable design.”

Here’s a video of the remarkable moment when mechanical arms secured the enormous booster as it returned to Earth:

In a post on its website, SpaceX said: “Following a successful liftoff, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and coast, the Super Heavy booster performed its landing burn and was caught by the chopstick arms of the launch and catch tower at Starbase. Thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria had to be met prior to the catch attempt, and thanks to the tireless work of SpaceX engineers, we succeeded with catch on our first attempt.”

Earlier Starship test flights culminated in the booster either exploding in midair or being dumped in the sea.

While the booster got all the attention on Sunday due its astonishing homecoming, the Starship spacecraft enjoyed a successful flight, too, executing a hot-staging separation from the Super Heavy and igniting its six Raptor engines to carry it into orbit.

“It coasted along its planned trajectory to the other side of the planet before executing a controlled reentry, passing through the phases of peak heating and maximum aerodynamic pressure, before executing a flip, landing burn, and splashdown at its target area in the Indian Ocean,” SpaceX said, adding that the flight test concluded 1 hour and 5 minutes after launch when the spacecraft splashed down in the ocean.

“The entire SpaceX team should take pride in the engineering feat they just accomplished,” the Elon Musk-led spaceflight company said. “The world witnessed what the future will look like when Starship starts carrying crew and cargo to destinations on Earth, the moon, Mars, and beyond.”

In an earlier interview, Musk explained how SpaceX hoped to bring the Super Heavy booster home.

“This is a custom-built tower with arms that are designed to catch the largest flying and heaviest flying object ever made and pluck it outta the air,” the billionaire entrepreneur said. “So you got a couple hundred tons plummeting at more than half the speed of sound. So this thing is still coming in really fast. When the engines land … it’s gonna drop the velocity to basically zero and come in between the arms.”

“The arms will be wide, and as it’s coming in, the arms will close, go flush against the side of the vehicle, and the vehicle will be descending through the arms.”

Many observers thought that the first landing attempt would probably end in failure, so it was a very special moment as the booster settled in between the mechanical arms on the very first try.