Why SpaceX ‘catching’ Starship booster with robotic arms is significant

Starship is a two-stage heavy lift vehicle comprising a booster (called Super Heavy), and an upper section (the Starship spacecraft).

Together, the rocket system is nearly 120 metres tall, making it the largest rocket ever — taller than even the Saturn V (111 metres), which took Neil Armstrong to the Moon. For perspective, the Qutab Minar is 72.5 m tall, roughly the length of the first stage booster that was caught on Sunday.

Starship is designed to carry crew or/ and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond, and once fully operational, can revolutionise space travel.

What was the mission on Sunday?

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The rocket system lifted off from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas at 7.25 am local time on Sunday with the help of Super Heavy’s 33 methane-burning Raptor engines. This was the rocket system’s fifth test launch.

Three minutes and 40 seconds after the launch, the booster detached from Starship, flipped, and restarted 13 Raptors to return towards the Texas coast. Rather than splashing down in the ocean (as is generally the case with first stage boosters), SpaceX wanted to land Super Heavy safely at the launch site.

The booster slowed down from its speeds of more than 27,350 km/hr, descending at an angle, before straightening as it approached the gantry (the structure supporting a rocket before its launch). The gantry’s arms, which have been given the moniker of “Mechazilla”, literally caught the descending booster, which then switched off its engines.

Meanwhile, the Starship spacecraft continued to head to space, powered by its six Raptors. It completed one revolution around Earth, before carrying out a controlled, on-target splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Why was this mission significant?

Most rocket systems are expendable, meaning they can be used only once. This makes rocket launches quite costly and time-consuming. For decades, engineers have attempted to devise reusable space vehicles — but with limited success.

SpaceX is the latest space organisation to want to transcend the limitations of expendable rocket systems, by creating a system that is fully and rapidly reusable. Catching the Super Heavy is a milestone to this end. In future, the company hopes it will be able to rapidly stack a Starship spacecraft back on top of the landed booster, allowing the rocket to launch again, almost immediately.

In an interview to YouTube channel Everyday Astronaut, Musk said that his vision is that Mechazilla will one day be able to turn around and set a rocket back on the launchpad, perhaps as little as 30 minutes after touchdown.

Notably, over the years, SpaceX has mastered the process of landing its smaller workhouse rocket, the Falcon 9. That process, however, is very different, with the booster landing on specially-built platforms using landing legs strapped to its side, rather than being caught in mid-air.

Why is Starship important for the future of space travel and exploration?

Starship is a key part of SpaceX’s plans to send astronauts or/and cargo to celestial bodies. The company wants to use the Starship HLS (Human Landing System) to take NASA astronauts back to the moon by 2026 as a part of the Artemis III mission. SpaceX has received government contracts worth up to around $4 billion to complete the task, according to a report by CNN. Eventually, SpaceX hopes that Starship will put the first humans on Mars.

However, before executing these ambitious plans, the company needs to prove that Starship is safe and reliable, while keeping costs low. Historically, this has been a daunting task for space flight programmes.

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For instance, while NASA’s Space Shuttle programme (which ended in 2011) comprised partially reusable space vehicles, the cost of maintaining and refurbishing space shuttles turned out to be far greater than that of launching expendable rockets.