SpaceX has pulled off one of its boldest feats yet, catching the massive Super Heavy booster of its Starship rocket mid-air with a set of giant mechanical arms. The attempt, carried out on October 13, 2024, at the company’s Starbase launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, marked the first time a booster was successfully caught instead of landing in the ocean.
The milestone came during the fifth uncrewed test flight of Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built. The two-stage vehicle consists of the 230-foot Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft, both powered by SpaceX’s next-generation Raptor engines.
In earlier tests, the booster splashed down at sea and had to be retrieved, a time-consuming and costly process. By using the launch tower’s mechanical arms, a system SpaceX calls “Mechazilla,” the company has taken a major step toward fully reusing its largest rocket.
SpaceX shared a video of the catch on X, showing the giant arms clamping around the descending booster in real time. “Thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria had to be met prior to catching the Super Heavy booster. Thanks to the tireless work of SpaceX engineers, we succeeded with a catch on our first attempt,” the company said in its post.
This success brings SpaceX closer to its long-term goal of rapid rocket reusability, a cornerstone of lowering launch costs. The achievement is particularly important for upcoming missions, including NASA’s Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon, which will rely on versions of Starship for lunar landings.
The Starship system is also central to SpaceX’s long-term ambitions of sending humans to Mars. By catching and quickly reusing boosters, the company aims to launch Starship more frequently, reducing turnaround times and costs.
With four test flights already behind it, this fifth mission demonstrated the progress SpaceX has made in just over a year since Starship’s first launch attempt in April 2023. The company says further refinements are ahead, but the mid-air catch has set a new benchmark for rocket recovery.