SpaceX catches giant Starship booster with 'Chopsticks' on historic Flight 5 rocket launch and landing (video)

The biggest and most powerful rocket ever built took to the skies again. And this time, it came back.

SpaceX launched its 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Starship vehicle for the fifth time ever today (Oct. 13), sending the giant rocket aloft from its Starbase site in South Texas at 8:25 am. EDT (1225 GMT; 7:25 a.m. local Texas time). 

The mission aimed to break new ground for Starship, and for spaceflight in general: SpaceX planned to return Starship's huge first-stage booster, known as Super Heavy, directly to its launch mount, catching it with the "chopstick" arms of the launch tower in a bold and unprecedented maneuver. 

And that's exactly what happened. About seven minutes after liftoff, SpaceX's Super Heavy executed what appeared to be a bull's-eye landing, hovering near the Mechazilla launch tower as the tower captured it with its metal arms. 

Starship Die Cast Rocket Model Now $69.99 on Amazon. 
$69.99 at Amazon US

Starship Die Cast Rocket Model Now $69.99 on Amazon

If you can't see SpaceX's Starship in person, you can score a model of your own. Standing at 13.77 inches (35 cm), this is a 1:375 ratio of SpaceX's Starship as a desktop model. The materials here are alloy steel and it weighs just 225g.

Note: Stock is low so you'll have to act quickly to get this. 

"This is a day for the engineering history books," Kate Tice, SpaceX manager of Quality Systems Engineering, said during live commentary as SpaceX employees screamed and cheered at the company's Hawthorne, California headquarters behind her. "This is absolutely insane! On the first-ever attempt, we have successfully caught the Super Heavy booster back at the launch tower."

"Are you kidding me?" SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot added from the launch site. "Even in this day and age, what we just saw — that looked like magic."

The booster catch was not the only goal for Flight 5. SpaceX also aimed to send Starship's 165-foot-tall (50 m) upper stage — known as Starship, or simply Ship — to space and bring it back to Earth with a splashdown in the Indian Ocean. That occurred about 65 minutes after liftoff, with the Ship firing three of its six engines to hover over the ocean before tipping over and exploding.

"That was amazing," Tice said. "We were not intending to recover any of Starship, so that was the best ending that we could have hoped for."

Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, agreed.

"Big step towards making life multiplanetary was made today," he wrote on X (formerly Twitter) after the landing.

A giant moon and Mars rocket

SpaceX is developing Starship to help humanity settle the moon and Mars, among other exploration feats. The vehicle is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable (as evidenced by the Super Heavy launch-mount landing plan, which will slash the time needed between flights). This characteristic, combined with Starship's unprecedented power, could revolutionize spaceflight, according to the company and Musk.

Related: Starship and Super Heavy explained

NASA is a believer in the vehicle, selecting it to be the first crewed lander for its Artemis program of moon exploration. If all goes to plan, Starship will land NASA astronauts on Earth's nearest neighbor for the first time on the Artemis 3 mission, which is targeted to launch in September 2026.

SpaceX aims to get Starship up and running in time to meet such deadlines via its usual development strategy — tweaking the vehicle and testing those tweaks on test flights, then repeating the process. Indeed, the Flight 5 Starship featured some significant modifications compared to its predecessors.

"One of the key upgrades on Starship ahead of flight was a complete rework of its heat shield, with SpaceX technicians spending more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with newer-generation tiles, a backup ablative layer and additional protections between the flap structures," SpaceX wrote in a Flight 5 mission description.

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

The rocket has performed better on each successive flight. The debut mission lasted just four minutes, for example; SpaceX ordered a detonation high in the Texas sky after Starship's two stages failed to separate. But Flight 4, which launched on June 6, was a complete success; Ship reached orbital velocity, and both it and Super Heavy survived their return to Earth, landing in their designated splashdown zones. And Starship took another leap today.

The waiting game

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

If it were up to SpaceX, Flight 5 likely would've been in the books two months ago; the company said that Starship was ready to go from a technical standpoint in early August. 

Launches require approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), however, and the agency needed more time before greenlighting this one. Indeed, last month, the FAA said that it didn't expect approval for Flight 5 to come before late November.

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

"SpaceX's current license authorizing the Starship Flight 4 launch also allows for multiple flights of the same vehicle configuration and mission profile. SpaceX chose to modify both for its proposed Starship Flight 5 launch, which triggered a more in-depth review," agency officials wrote. 

A view of a SpaceX Flight 5 Starship as it reenters Earth's atmosphere, with red glowing plasma around it. (Image credit: SpaceX)

"In addition, SpaceX submitted new information in mid-August detailing how the environmental impact of Flight 5 will cover a larger area than previously reviewed," they added. "This requires the FAA to consult with other agencies." 

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

This SpaceX video still shows several images of the four flaps on SpaceX's Starship Flight 5 spacecraft, with one of them (top left) showing signs of burnthrough during reentry, but not as serious as that seen on Flight 4. (Image credit: SpaceX)

The Flight 5 "delay was not based on a new safety concern, but instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis," SpaceX wrote in the post.

"We find ourselves delayed for unreasonable and exasperating reasons," the company added. "Unfortunately, we continue to be stuck in a reality where it takes longer to do 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 directly threatens America's position as the leader in space."

At left, a SpaceX Starship wing glowing red as it reenters. On right, a fireball in the night after splashdown. (Image credit: SpaceX)

In the end, the late-November estimate for Flight 5 proved pessimistic. 

And it's safe to assume that SpaceX wants to launch another Starship mission relatively soon. Last month, SpaceX conducted a static fire — a common prelaunch test in which a rocket's engines are fired while it remains anchored to the ground — with the Flight 6 Ship vehicle.

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

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

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Mike Wall
Senior Space Writer

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.

  • Philly
    Bonkers! Congrats to the SX team!
    Reply
  • IronY
    Unless you grew up in JFK's Space Race and Apollo, You just cannot Appreciate HOW Difficult All this is to accomplish
    Reply
  • Classical Motion
    It was some outstanding programming.
    Reply
  • DanIAm
    I was an infant during Apollo. But grew up in it's shadow and expected (due to Apollo, Space Shuttle, Starwars, Space 1999 etc) that we would be there, I spent decades dissapointed.

    I was happy to see this work, or for a big kablooey, all fantastic entertainment via social media. But where this would have been the talking point for weeks not so long ago, won't register much of a blip coz apparently, "rich man bad".

    This should be a moment if you were an American, of intense pride.
    Reply
  • stormreforger
    IronY said:
    Unless you grew up in JFK's Space Race and Apollo, You just cannot Appreciate HOW Difficult All this is to accomplish
    I was 9 when Apollo 11 moonshot and I still am thrilled remembering and all the rest!! too bad ended with Apollo 17..
    Reply
  • stormreforger
    DanIAm said:
    I was an infant during Apollo. But grew up in it's shadow and expected (due to Apollo, Space Shuttle, Starwars, Space 1999 etc) that we would be there, I spent decades dissapointed.

    I was happy to see this work, or for a big kablooey, all fantastic entertainment via social media. But where this would have been the talking point for weeks not so long ago, won't register much of a blip coz apparently, "rich man bad".

    This should be a moment if you were an American, of intense pride.
    Just had to wait a bit like now and soon!! ;)
    Reply
  • stormreforger
    Soon,, this will be labelled as "FAKE" by Fake moon landing conspiracy generation..
    I remember all the launches from Gemini on up as I too young for Mercury fligfhts to remember and unbelievable how some believe it`s all fake??
    Soon Artemis lll hopefully 2026..
    Reply
  • stormreforger
    IronY said:
    Unless you grew up in JFK's Space Race and Apollo, You just cannot Appreciate HOW Difficult All this is to accomplish
    Indeed!!
    Reply
  • DanIAm
    Spacex said only a few months back, that their ambition was to send 5 of these to Mars in the next launch window. 5 with up to 140 tons each, that's a serious bit of payload already there prior to any human astronauts. One successful launch like tonight isn't a guarantee of repeating it, but it's a hopeful indicator...

    Anyway, the future is a nice dream, but this launch was the result of a lot of hard work that worked right now. Well done everyone at SpaceX 👍
    Reply
  • Philly
    Humm, When is that "other guy" going to put anything into orbit after 25 years of messing around? Talk about the classic Tortoise and the Hare, story. The Hare started earlier and had more money but still hasn't barely even really started yet.

    I know the media loves to paint a picture of a New Space Race between billionaires. Sure you can call it that, the same ways MLB players and T-ballers are both baseball players.
    Reply