SpaceX’s epic Starship Super Heavy rocket catch looked just like the company imagined (side-by-side video)

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

SpaceX’s epic Starship Super Heavy rocket catch looked just like the company imagined (side-by-side video)

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.

Credit: SpaceX

A new video released ahead of SpaceX’s next Starship launch shows just how perfectly the rocket booster nailed its first landing.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

launched its 400-foot-tall (122 meters)

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

vehicle for the fifth time Oct. 13, sending the megarocket on its most successful test flight so far. Unlike previous Starship launches, the vehicle’s fifth integrated test flight (IFT-5) of its Super Heavy first stage and Starship upper stage attempted to return the first stage booster to the launchpad and catch the rocket with a pair of “chopstick” arms on the pad’s tower.

The historic catch marked the first time ever a rocket stage has been caught in mid-air, and symbolized a major advancement towards SpaceX’s goal for Starship’s full reusability. Starship’s next launch (

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

or IFT-6) is expected no earlier than tomorrow, Nov. 19, and will follow a similar flight profile as IFT-5, with another Super Heavy return and catch at the launch tower. Ahead of tomorrow’s launch, SpaceX

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

of Super Heavy’s first landing side-by-side with the company’s animation of what they expected the first landing might look like, and the two are nearly identical, shot for shot.

Side by side images show a rocket booster hovering in mid air to the right of a tall launch tower on the shores of a sea.

Starship **** Cast Rocket Model

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

If you can’t see SpaceX’s Starship in person, you can score a model of your own. Standing at 13.77 inches (35 cm), this is a 1:375 ratio of SpaceX’s Starship as a desktop model. The materials here are alloy steel and it weighs just 225g.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Most U.S. rocket launches occur off Florida’s Space Coast, from launchpads either at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) or Cape Canaveral Space Force Base. For now, though, Starship launches from SpaceX’s Starbase test facility, in southern Texas. The location offers a near-equatorial launch trajectory while offering a remote enough area not to risk nearby infrastructure should a test launch experience any off-nominal events, such as a rapid unscheduled deconstruction, or “RUD,” as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk likes to call them — a few of which

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

Related: What to expect during SpaceX’s 6th Starship test flight on Nov. 19

SpaceX’s SN10 Starship, which launched on a 6-mile (10-kilometer) high “hop test” in 2021, successfully touched down back at Starbase, only to explode

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. Starship’s first integrated test flight (IFT-1) ended with the entire vehicle’s self destruction as it tumbled high in Earth’s atmosphere. And while SpaceX has implemented new improvements into Starship as its development has progressed, successfully catching the Super Heavy booster on the first attempt was not guaranteed. In fact, the booster was just one second away from aborting its tower approach completely.

The new video, shared to SpaceX’s account on X, shows side-by-side footage of Super Heavy’s landing approach as it returns to the Starbase launch tower synchronized with a pre-flight animation of the same attempt.

Far from a RUD, the real-life Super Heavy booster catch performed nearly shot-for-shot the same as SpaceX’s animation. The dramatic pairing emphasizes the literal and metaphorical leaps the launch vehicle has taken over the past few years as it approaches operational qualification, which can’t come too soon for both SpaceX and NASA.

The U.S. space agency awarded SpaceX the first Human Landing Services (HLS) contract to use Starship as the lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis 3 mission. The Artemis Program aims to return astronauts to the surface of the moon for the first time since the Apollo era, and NASA is counting on Starship to transport its astronauts safely down for lunar landing. NASA has pushed its initial launch dates back for Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 due to a number of delays, and has cited Starship’s developmental timeline as pressing concern for program readiness.

RELATED STORIES:

— SpaceX rolls Starship Flight 6 spacecraft to pad ahead of Nov. 18 launch — and it’s wearing a banana (photos)

— SpaceX catches giant Starship booster with ‘Chopsticks’ on historic Flight 5 rocket launch and landing (video)

— SpaceX’s Starship booster was ‘1 second away’ from aborting epic launch-tower catch

Building off the success of IFT-5, tomorrow’s launch (Nov. 19) will follow a similar flight profile, with the addition of an in-space reignition of Starship’s Raptor engines.

The livestream for IFT-6 is expected begin about 30 minutes before the start of the 5 p.m. EST (2100 GMT) launch window. SpaceX’s official stream is hosted on the company’s

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, and will be simulcast on Space.com’s

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, as well as at the top of the

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

homepage.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#SpaceXs #epic #Starship #Super #Heavy #rocket #catch #looked #company #imagined #sidebyside #video

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up