SpaceX Launches Starship 5th Flight; Catches Booster With 'Chopsticks' In Groundbreaking Test Mission

SpaceX Starship on fifth flight test mission Sunday(Oct. 13), lifted off from its Starbase site in South Texas at 1225 UTC. Following stage separation, the Super Heavy booster successfully returned around 7 minutes after liftoff, to the launch tower's mechanical 'chopstick' arms called Mechazilla, in an amazing catch that before today, could only be seen in sci-fi movies and CGI simulations.

"This is a day for the engineering history books," Kate Tice, SpaceX manager of Quality Systems Engineering, said during live commentary as SpaceX employees screamed and cheered at the company's Hawthorne, California headquarters behind her. "This is absolutely insane! On the first-ever attempt, we have successfully caught the Super Heavy booster back at the launch tower."

"Are you kidding me?" SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot added from the launch site. "Even in this day and age, what we just saw — that looked like magic."

"I don't know what to say!" SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell exclaimed on X.

With the booster catch, SpaceX accomplished one of the two main goals of IFT-5. Sixty-five minutes after liftoff, Starship accomplished a second goal with a splashdown of its upper stage(or Ship) in the Indian Ocean. The Ship, firing three of its six engines, hovered before tipping over the ocean.

"Starship executed another successful hot-staging separation, igniting its six Raptor engines and completing ascent into outer space" SpaceX writes in the mission description. "It coasted along its planned trajectory to the other side of the planet before executing a controlled reentry, passing through the phases of peak heating and maximum aerodynamic pressure, before executing a flip, landing burn, and splashdown at its target area in the Indian Ocean. The flight test concluded at splashdown 1 hour, 5 minutes and 40 seconds after launch."

"That was amazing," Tice said. "We were not intending to recover any of Starship, so that was the best ending that we could have hoped for."

"Big step towards making life multiplanetary was made today," CEO Elon Musk wrote on X after the landing.

SpaceX aims to get a fully and rapidly reusable megarocket to help humanity settle the moon and Mars, according to Musk. The Super Heavy launch-mount landing plan will slash the time needed between flights.

Starship's rapid development strategy means that Flight 5 features some modifications and upgrades compared to its predecessors.

"One of the key upgrades on Starship ahead of flight was a complete rework of its heat shield, with SpaceX technicians spending more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with newer-generation tiles, a backup ablative layer and additional protections between the flap structures," SpaceX wrote in a Flight 5 mission description.

Sunday's launch comes after weeks of delay caused by concerns raised by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over licensing and environmental impact issues which Musk and his company vehemently disputed. The SpaceX chief slammed the FAA in several posts on X, accusing the agency of holding back U.S. progress in the space race.

Critics also say FAA's 'foot-dragging' with the approval of Flight 5, could also be part of President Joe Biden administration's politically-motivated lawfare which it has waged against Musk over the last 3 years.