SERGIO FLORES/AFP via Getty Images
- SpaceX achieved an incredible engineering feat on Sunday.
- The company launched the fifth test flight of its Starship rocket.
- After liftoff, the Super Heavy booster returned to the launchpad in a world-first maneuver.
SpaceX's Starship rocket achieved a world first on Sunday during its fifth test flight, showing for the first time that the launch system may really have what it takes to change spaceflight.
The launch system includes a Starship rocket ship stacked atop a 233-foot-tall Super Heavy booster and stands taller than the Statue of Liberty.
The Super Heavy booster released Starship on its path toward space, then began to fall back to Earth. For the first time ever, as the booster descended toward the company's Texas launchpad, a pair of giant mechanical "chopsticks," or arms, snatched it.
The giant booster had returned to Earth in one piece. It was SpaceX's first attempt at the revolutionary chopstick maneuver.
"A day for the history books," engineers at SpaceX said as the booster landed.
This engineering feat is unlike anything ever seen in orbital-rocket technology. But it's something that SpaceX's founder and CEO, Elon Musk, has been touting for years.
"I know it sounds insane," Musk said in an interview for the YouTube channel Everyday Astronaut in 2021. "When I suggested that, people thought I'd lost my mind."
The feat brings SpaceX one step closer to Musk's goals of building the first fully reusable rocket system, slashing the cost of spaceflight, and, ultimately, making humanity a multiplanetary species.
Now that SpaceX has proved both Starship and Super Heavy can launch toward space and return to Earth in one piece, the company is on track to reduce rocket-launch costs by an estimated 10 times.
A huge step toward Musk's vision of colonizing Mars
SpaceX
Starship is designed to be the world's first fully reusable rocket, meaning both the booster and the spaceship should be able to return to Earth ready to be used again.
Super Heavy's successful landing on Sunday is one of the last big steps toward achieving that goal.
The savings of reusability aren't hypothetical; SpaceX's Falcon 9 boosters have already proved that reusability can cut costs. SpaceX is able to offer cheap and quick turnaround launches at about $67 million a flight, which is about $1,500 per pound of payload.
By comparison, the Space Shuttle cost about $25,000 per pound of payload when it was active.
Musk has previously said his ambition is to bring Starship costs down to about $10 million a launch, a drastic price cut that could open the door for futuristic space industries like asteroid mining and space factories. Ultimately, it could pave the way toward achieving Musk's vision of a colony on Mars with 1 million people.
Starship is the vehicle that's supposed to make Musk's Mars dreams come true.
"No rocket before this has had the potential to extend life to another planet," Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002 for this very purpose, said in April. Musk isn't the only one.
"I have little doubt that it's going to be the workhorse that will bring humans back to the moon and Mars," Olivier de Weck, a professor of aeronautics, astronautics, and engineering at MIT, previously told Business Insider.
"It's not just a cool rocket project, but literally it has the potential to change the fate of humanity," he said.
SpaceX makes rocket history
In past Starship test flights, the Super Heavy booster either exploded midflight or landed in the water. Sunday's test flight was the first time the booster returned to its launch site.
After its 33 Raptor engines roared to life, lifting Starship toward its destination, the booster headed toward home. As it neared the launch tower, it fired three of its engines to slow down. Then, like something out of a sci-fi film, it slowly lowered itself gently into the tower's mechanical arms as SpaceX employees screamed and cheered in the background.
However, the company has faced a series of setbacks and delays since Starship's inaugural orbit-height flight 18 months ago. SpaceX said regulators were delaying Starship's fifth test launch because of minor changes and that the Federal Aviation Administration was dragging its heels.
But on Saturday, the FAA approved Starship's fifth launch, and SpaceX wasted no time and launched the very next day. The FAA did require that SpaceX take more steps to better analyze the environmental impact of its launches moving forward.
For example, SpaceX will have environmental engineers check how the launches affect nearby animal nesting sites during and after launches, The New York Times reported.