SpaceX, the company led by Elon Musk, has for the first time in history successfully caught its Starship spacecraft with special mechanical arms and returned it to the launch pad.
Globalinfo.az reports that this technological achievement is regarded as an important step toward creating fully reusable rocket systems.
Entering Earth’s atmosphere, Starship withstood the high temperatures generated and appeared from among the clouds. The craft then descended toward SpaceX’s Starbase spaceport in southern Texas. The spacecraft entered precisely between the special mechanical arms installed at Launch Pad 2 and was caught by them.
This success is seen as moving closer to one of the main goals the space industry has pursued for many years. Reusing rockets and spacecraft could lower the costs of future missions and also create conditions for carrying out more frequent flights to space.
Note that this was the 15th test flight of Starship, considered the world’s largest and most powerful rocket system. In traditional space systems, many vehicles are designed for only one mission and become unusable after flight. This requires additional financial and technical resources for each new launch.
Safura Bənnayeva
Globalinfo.az
