For the 2nd time in history, a spaceflight company has caught a ~250 ton rocket booster on its way back on Earth.
Today, Elon Musk’s SpaceX demonstrated another perfect Super Heavy booster landing catch during the Flight 7 Starship launch test (IFT-7) at Starbase, Texas.
Elon Musk took to his social media platform X (Twitter) to post the stunning footage of the landing catch of Flight 7 booster. The sight of the rocket booster catch is always exciting and is worthy of multiple replays — let’s watch.
In case the launch tower Chopsticks are not able to catch the Super Heavy booster, it will end up in a disaster because the Super Heavy rocket booster does not have landing legs and they are designed to be caught instead of land on surface.
However, SpaceX successfully caught Flight 7 rocket booster and there was no mishap. There are thousands of live assessments during the flight, reentry, and landing before SpaceX decides to catch the booster. Last time in Flight 6, SpaceX landed the booster in the Gulf of Mexico instead of catching it.
Although SpaceX successfully caught the booster on its landing, the upper stage Ship 33 was lost and ended in a RUD.
SpaceX also shared the video compilation of Flight 7 booster’s landing catch via its official X account.
Related: Starship Flight 7 live updates archive and recorded live stream archive here
Related Starship News
- SpaceX announces Starship’s Flight 12 launch date
- Flight 12 Starship Booster 19 performs a full-duration 33-engine static fire test ahead of launch
- SpaceX conducts successful static fire tests on Starship 39 and Booster 19, Flight 12 happening in a few weeks
- Starship Flight 12: Booster 19’s 10-engine static fire ends abruptly, SpaceX prepares for a 33-engine static fire test
- Starship Flight 12: V3 Booster 19 shows better propellant load speeds, static fire next with only 10 Raptor 3 engines
- Starship Flight 12: SpaceX to test Raptor 3 engines on the V3 Booster 19 for the first time
