Did you see this?! IT’S INCREDIBLE! SpaceX launched its enormous Starship rocket on Sunday—and caught the returning booster back at the pad with mechanical arms.
The 400-foot Starship blasted off at sunrise from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border.
SpaceX brought the first-stage booster back to land at the pad from which it had departed seven minutes earlier. The launch tower sported monstrous metal arms, dubbed chopsticks, that caught the descending 232-foot booster.
From SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, SpaceX’s Kate Tice added, “This is a day for the engineering history books.”
NASA has ordered two Starships to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. SpaceX intends to use Starship to send people and supplies to the moon and, eventually Mars.