In one of the most dramatic and risky space flights yet, SpaceX launched a giant Super Heavy-Starship rocket on an unmanned test flight on Sunday and then used giant “mechazilla” mechanical arms on the platform to grab the descending first stage out. of the air as the upper stage continued into space.

The spectacular catch, which used pincer-like arms known as chopsticks, represented another milestone in SpaceX’s quest to develop fully reusable, rapidly relaunchable rockets. It’s a technological feat unparalleled in the history of previous space programs that relied on expendable, disposable rockets.

The 350-foot rocket lifted off at 8:25 a.m. EDT from SpaceX’s flight facility in Boca Chica, Texas, on the Texas Gulf Coast, putting on a spectacular sunrise show as the booster’s 33 methane-burning Raptor engines ignited with a ground-shaking roar and a flood of flaming exhaust fumes.

Three minutes and 40 seconds after takeoff, the Super Heavy booster fell away, turned around and restarted 13 Raptors to change course and return to the Texas coast, while the Starship’s upper stage continued the climb to the space powered by the power of its six Raptor engines.

The booster’s flight computer was programmed to guide the stage to a landing in the Gulf of Mexico if any problems arose with the rocket or the launch pad’s capture mechanism.

But no such problems were discovered and the Super Heavy continued to its launch pad, descended and then slowed until it was almost floating between the two mechanical arms, which then moved in to grab the rocket as the engines failed. SpaceX employees at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, erupted in cheers and applause.

The remarkable catch, a key element in SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s drive to achieve “rapid reusability,” came as the Starship’s upper stage was still en route to space and crashed into the Indian Ocean, with a landing on the coast or eventually on the moon was simulated. or Mars. Splashdown was expected an hour and five minutes after launch.

During the rocket’s fourth test flight in June, extreme temperatures caused significant damage to the spacecraft’s protective tiles and control fins. Multiple upgrades and improvements have been made for Sunday’s flight to eliminate or minimize such re-entry damage.

The two-stage Super heavy spaceshipCollectively known as the Starship, is the largest and most powerful rocket in the world with twice the launch power of NASA’s legendary Saturn 5 and nearly twice the power of NASA’s new Space Launch System moon rocket.

The 30-foot-wide Super Heavy first stage, loaded with 6.8 million pounds of liquid oxygen and methane propellants, stands 230 feet tall and is powered by 33 SpaceX-designed Raptor engines that generate up to 16 million pounds of thrust. The Starship’s upper stage is 50 meters long and carries 2.6 million pounds of propellant to power an additional six Raptors.

Both stages are designed to be fully reusable, with the Super Heavy flying itself back to its launch pad as the spacecraft travels to and from Earth orbit, the moon or ultimately Mars. The spaceship is designed to land vertically at landing sites on Earth and beyond using its own rocket power.

But the primary purpose of Sunday’s flight was to demonstrate the ability to capture returning Super Heavy boosters on the launch pad, where they can be quickly refurbished, refueled and relaunched.

SpaceX perfected the first stage landings with its workhorse Falcon 9 rocketswith 352 such boosters successfully recovered to date with powered touchdowns on landing pads or offshore droneships. The Falcon 9’s smaller first stages land independently and deploy four landing legs a few seconds before landing.

Snatching the 70-foot-tall Super Heavy with mechanical arms out of the sky as the rocket descends and hovers right next to its launch gantry seemed like a bizarre idea when it was first proposed during the booster’s initial development.

But SpaceX engineers “spent years preparing and months testing the booster capture effort, with engineers pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances of success,” the company said on its website.

“With each flight building on the lessons learned from the last and testing improvements in hardware and operation in every facet of Starship, we are poised to demonstrate techniques fundamental to Starship’s fully and rapidly reusable design,” it continued company.

SpaceX has a contract with NASA to provide a modified spacecraft to take astronauts to landings near the moon’s south pole in the agency’s Artemis program.

To get a Starship lander to the moon, SpaceX must first launch it into low Earth orbit and then launch multiple Super Heavy-Starship “tankers” to fuel the moon-bound Starship for the journey to lunar orbit .

The astronauts will be launched atop NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and fly to the moon aboard a Lockheed Martin-built Orion capsule. The crew is transferred to the waiting spaceship for the descent to the lunar surface. NASA hopes to send the first woman and the next man to the moon in 2027-2028, after an unmanned moon landing from the Starship.

Rapid reusability is a key element of the program given the number of Super Heavy Starships that will be needed for a single moon landing. Although Sunday’s test flight appeared to go smoothly, multiple flights will be needed to perfect the system and demonstrate the reliability needed to transport astronauts.

How long that could take is an open question.

In recent weeks, Musk has launched a campaign on social media against the Federal Aviation Administration, complaining that the agency’s bureaucracy takes too much time to review and approve launch licenses and is actually stifling innovation and development of the new missile system is slowing down. .

The FAA only granted a permit to launch Sunday’s test flight the day before. But this time the license included multiple test flights with approximately the same flight plan.