SpaceX makes history by recovering its Starship spacecraft upon returning to Earth after an orbital mission

For the first time in its history, SpaceX managed to recover part of the Starship spacecraft by catching it on a launch tower in southern Texas this Saturday, completing its first landing maneuver after an orbital mission, which opens the door to possible reuse of its rockets. After a flight of 22 and a half hours, the spacecraft returned to Earth and remained suspended in the air near the Mechazilla launch tower, whose mechanical arms, nicknamed "chopsticks," secured it. "Mechazilla catches the Starship! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on this incredible achievement!" the company founded by tech magnate Elon Musk posted shortly afterward on social media. This is the fifteenth Starship test and the first in which the full recovery of both parts of the rocket was expected; however, the capture of its lower section was aborted a few minutes after the spacecraft's launch this Friday. According to the BBC, SpaceX needs to reliably recover both parts of the rocket and make them fully reusable in order to fly them repeatedly and drastically reduce costs. Shortly after the feat, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman took to social media to praise SpaceX's achievement, congratulating the team and Musk. "It was almost magical... Every day more people believe... one step closer to the Moon," Isaacman wrote on X. It is worth noting that NASA has a multi-billion-dollar contract with the company to adapt a Starship spacecraft and use it as a lunar lander, which could mean the first Moon landing since the Apollo program ended in 1972, according to CNN. The Starship spacecraft's trajectory The 124-meter-tall rocket successfully lifted off yesterday from the Starbase launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, at 4:47 p.m. local time (7:47 p.m. in Chile), to begin a 22-hour orbit around Earth. The plan was to catch the rocket's lower section, the Super Heavy booster, six and a half minutes after its reentry into the atmosphere, but the booster activated an automatic abort system, diverting toward the ocean, where it remained suspended above the water before exploding. Launch of the Starship spacecraft from the Starbase launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas. Photo: @SpaceX on X. Later, Musk posted on X that the booster had "a slightly low fuel level." However, the upper section continued its journey into space, where it deployed 26 satellites that are part of the Starlink constellation, which provides high-speed internet, and completed 14 orbits around Earth. Before its landing, the spacecraft flew over populated areas of Texas and Mexico until it reached the Mechazilla tower, where, for the first time in the history of rockets, it landed vertically and was caught by its mechanical arms.