CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX’s Starship returned from orbit Saturday and was caught in midair by giant mechanical arms at the Texas pad where its flight began 22 hours earlier, a first for the company, the Associated Press reported.
The 407-foot rocket lifted off late Friday from SpaceX’s Starbase near the U.S.-Mexico border. The upper-stage spacecraft reached orbit, released 26 Starlink satellites and circled Earth 14 times, compared with one or two laps on the previous mission.
The first-stage booster did not fare as well. SpaceX’s Kate Tice said its engines stopped firing too soon on the way down, and its guidance system steered it away and triggered self-destruction. Wreckage remained in the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX has caught boosters three times before.
SpaceX said everything on the spacecraft, including its heat shield, appeared to work well. It was the 15th flight of a full-scale Starship since 2023 and only the second to reach orbit.
NASA is paying billions of dollars for Starship to land Artemis astronauts on the moon and to help build a lunar base. SpaceX expects to begin launching Starships from Kennedy Space Center in Florida within months.
NASA is targeting as soon as 2028 for Artemis IV, which would be the first crewed moon landing since the Apollo era.
Sources: Associated Press via KTAR News. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Federal Aviation Administration / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
