SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared ambitious plans for Starship’s fifth launch. The mega-rocket plans to complete its next test launch in July, after conducting a successful fourth launch earlier this month. But this time, Musk said the company plans to try to catch the rocket as it lands so it can reuse the super-heavy rocket.
SpaceX will try to catch Starship
The reason SpaceX has such an ambitious plan for Starship’s fifth launch is because the company wants to take full advantage of Starship’s capabilities.
The company has proven time and again that it can successfully build reusable rockets, thanks to the success of the Falcon 9 series. However, since the Super Heavy rocket does not have landing legs, it needs another landing method if it wants to reuse it.
The solution to this problem lies in a tower called Mechazilla. Construction of the tower started in 2021 and will be approximately 146 meters high when completed. The tower will have a series of robotic arms that will attempt to catch the rocket during Starship’s fifth launch attempt.
SpaceX says that during the Starship launch, the two stages will separate in flight. At this point the Super Heavy rocket will return to the launch site, restart its engines to slow the vehicle, and then the arms on the tower will attempt to catch the rocket before it settles back into the stacking bay.
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If successful, the maneuver will allow SpaceX to prepare the Super Heavy rocket for another launch much more quickly. In the last Starship launch, the Super Heavy rocket landed on water.
Starship also faces some environmental concerns, so successfully pulling off this landing will be a huge feat to prove that the mega-rocket is truly the answer to humanity’s future space exploration plans.