SpaceX conducted the 5th test launch of its Starship rocket from South Texas. The launch was successful and the Starship’s Super Heavy Booster made its first landing in Texas.

For the first time, SpaceX attempted and succeeded in capturing the booster Super Heavy, which is at the bottom of the spacecraft as it returns to the launch site in Texas. At the launch site is the world’s tallest rocket tower, 146 meters (480 feet) tall with two giant robotic arms that SpaceX calls “chopsticks.” These caught the rocket booster before returning it to the orbital launch pad for its next flight.

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Being able to land the booster safely increases its chances of being reused quickly, which would lower the cost of spaceflight.

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The goal for each phase of the mission is to explore how SpaceX can in the future quickly recover and reuse Super Heavy rockets and Starship spacecraft for future missions. Rapid reusability of rocket parts is seen as essential to SpaceX’s goal of drastically reducing the time and cost of sending cargo – or even groups of people – into Earth orbit and into deep space.

Elon Musk, immediately after the successful return of the Super Heavy Booster uploaded to X:

Until last Saturday it was unclear whether the launch would take place as SpaceX awaited approval from US authorities. Last month SpaceX publicly accused the US government of threatening “America’s position as a leader in space” because of the time it took to overhaul its bureaucracy on key issues such as the environmental impact of flight.

A fifth test flight in just 18 months is an outstanding achievement for the SpaceX team. The first two flights saw the vehicle break up shortly before its missions. However, SpaceX maintains that this is all part of its development plan – to launch early with the expectation of failure so it can collect as much data as possible and develop its systems faster than its competitors.

Since the last flight in June, SpaceX said its engineers have worked collectively for 12,000 hours to replace the Starship’s entire heat shield with additional protections. During its final flight, as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, some of the shielding tiles on the surface were destroyed as the ship became enveloped in superheated, ionized gas.

Elon Musk and SpaceX have big plans that the rocket system will one day take humanity to Mars, making our species “multiplanetary.”