Video: Watch this audacious SpaceX maneuver to recapture Starship booster rocket

SpaceX launched the fifth test flight of its massive Super Heavy Booster/Starship system early Sunday and just moments later, recaptured the 233-foot tall booster stage on the very pad it launched from, snagging the towering section with remote controlled grappling arms.
The dramatic recovery extends SpaceX’s success arc in reusing pricey space flight components as it works to prove out Starship, its newest spacecraft and one slated to ferry astronauts to the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program and, eventually, carry the first humans to Mars.
After separation about seven minutes into the flight, SpaceX engineers relit three of the Super Heavy Booster’s 33 Raptor engines to slow and control its descent. As the booster eased down near the 400-foot launch pad tower in Boca Chica, Texas, two steel arms closed around the component, holding it just off the pad.
SpaceX owner Elon Musk, along with company employees, NASA officials and others, celebrated the landmark maneuver as the Starship capsule continued on a one-hour flight around Earth that ended in a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
“The tower has caught the rocket!!” Musk posted on X. “Big step towards making life multiplanetary was made today.”
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson offered SpaceX congratulations in his own social media post Sunday morning
“Congratulations to @SpaceX on its successful booster catch and fifth Starship flight test today!” Nelson wrote. “As we prepare to go back to the Moon under #Artemis, continued testing will prepare us for the bold missions that lie ahead — including to the South Pole region of the Moon and then on to Mars.”
Under development for years, SpaceX’s Starship system is comprised of the 164-foot tall Starship spacecraft and the 233-foot tall Super Heavy rocket booster. The massive booster is powered by 33 individual Raptor engines that, in unison, create nearly 17 million pounds of thrust. The methane-powered system dwarfs the former record held by NASA’s Space Launch System, which flew a successful test flight last November and can achieve almost 9 million pounds of thrust.
SpaceX describes Starship as “a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, help humanity return to the moon, and travel to Mars and beyond.” As SpaceX does with its workhorse Falcon 9 rockets, the Starship system is designed for booster return and reuse capabilities. The company has been successfully recovering Falcon 9 boosters for nine years, employing a remote controlled, floating landing pad typically deployed off the coast of Florida.
Starship is capable of lifting as much as 250 tons into space and could accommodate 100 people on a potential trip to Mars.
SpaceX has its own plans for putting the Starship to work once it becomes operational, ferrying satellites to low Earth orbit and potentially carrying paying passengers to space. But NASA is also vested in successful development of the giant rocket system, having struck a multibillion-dollar deal with SpaceX in hopes of making Starship part of the Artemis moon mission. Starship’s upper stage spacecraft would be used to carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon but the NASA contract stipulates that SpaceX must first prove its abilities by performing a successful unmanned lunar landing.
In a move foreshadowed by federal auditors’ findings late last year, NASA announced in January it was pushing out next steps in its multiphase Artemis moonshot program with two crewed mission launch dates, one aiming to orbit the moon and the other hoping to put astronauts on the lunar surface, each bumped out by one year.
NASA officials said further work to ensure mission safety is driving the rescheduling, as well as delays in third-party programs that are developing new spacesuits, orbital refueling systems and lunar landing spacecraft.
In the January update, Nelson announced the Artemis II mission, slated to carry astronauts on a journey that will include orbiting the moon, is now scheduled for launch in September 2025. The Artemis III mission, which will return astronauts to the surface of the moon for the first time in over 50 years, now has a September 2026 target launch date.