SpaceX has conducted four spaceflight tests of the full Starship rocket system to date, with launches in April and November of last year, as well as March and June. Each of the test flights has achieved more milestones than the last.

The company’s rocket first successfully completed an in-flight flight test in June, when Starship crashed in the Indian Ocean after surviving the intense forces of atmospheric re-entry. Additionally, the rocket’s booster returns in one piece to make a controlled landing in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Starship system is designed to be completely reusable and aims to become a new method of flying cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also crucial to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX has won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis moon program.

Company executives have said SpaceX expects to fly hundreds of Starship missions before launching the rocket with any crew.

SpaceX emphasizes that it is trying to build “on what we have learned from previous flights” in its approach to developing the massive rocket.

But the company wanted to launch the fifth flight earlier than October, prompting both SpaceX and Musk to be outspokenly critical of the FAA, saying “redundant environmental reviews” were holding up the process.

While the FAA and partner agencies at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service have conducted reviews faster than expected, SpaceX has also had to pay fines to environmental regulators related to unauthorized water releases at the Texas launch site.

With the booster capture, SpaceX has surpassed the milestones of the fourth test flight.

The company completed its objective by returning the booster to the launch site and using the ‘chopsticks’ arms on the tower to capture the vehicle. The company sees the ambitious capture approach as crucial to its goal of making the rocket fully reusable.

“SpaceX engineers have prepared for years and tested for months for the booster capture effort, with engineers putting in tens of thousands of hours building the infrastructure to maximize our chances of success,” the company wrote on its website.

The catch requires thousands of criteria to be met, the company said. If it had not been ready, the booster would have deviated from its return trajectory and instead crashed offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We will not accept compromises when it comes to ensuring the safety of the public and our team, and reentry will only be attempted when conditions are right,” SpaceX said.

Starship is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked on the Super Heavy booster, the Starship is 120 meters high and has a diameter of approximately 9 meters.

The Super Heavy booster, which is 70 meters high, marks the start of the rocket’s journey to space. At its base are 33 Raptor engines, which together produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust — about double the 8.8 million pounds of thrust of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket, which first launched in 2022.

The spaceship itself, which is 50 meters tall, has six Raptor engines: three for use in Earth’s atmosphere and three for use in the vacuum of space.

The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The entire system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant for launch.