SpaceX’s Starship to return to Earth after booster rocket self-destructed

SpaceX said its Starship spacecraft was “healthy” as it orbited the Earth and on track to return to its Texas launch site, where Elon Musk’s company was planning to “catch” the vehicle for the first time.

It was the 15th test flight of the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket system, originally meant to feature a groundbreaking twin capture of both the Super Heavy booster and the Starship.

Successful recoveries of both stages would have marked a milestone in the space industry’s decades-long pursuit of fully reusable rocket systems that can drastically reduce mission costs and make frequent launches possible.

But that achievement slipped out of reach minutes after the 124m rocket blasted off Friday from its launch pad at Starbase.

After the mid-air separation of the two stages, the Super Heavy booster was descending when its guidance, navigation and control system aborted the capture attempt.

SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said: “The booster was not in the place that it was supposed to be to proceed with the catch.”

He added that engineers were still investigating the root cause.

Super Heavy, which SpaceX had caught three times previously, diverted to the Gulf of Mexico just off the launch site and automatically self-destructed before hitting the water.

The Starship spacecraft that gives the rocket system its name was orbiting Earth, which it was expected to do 14 times before returning at the end of a 22-hour flight.

It successfully deployed 26 satellites shortly after arriving in space on Friday to join Musk’s Starlink satellite internet constellation.

“Overall, the ship’s still looking healthy, and we are still on track for a catch attempt here at Starbase,” Huot said.

Flight control will make a decision on whether to proceed with the capture attempt about two hours before its scheduled return.

Senior SpaceX engineer Lars Blackmore said: “If you want to get back to the east coast of Texas, you have to fly over the entire continent to get back there. So, inevitably you’re flying over land and we spend a lot of time figuring out the safest way to do that.

“Once the rocket is flying over land, there’s 21 minutes where the operators can’t do anything, and so we’re just going to be holding our breath for that time.”

The return path will see Starship fly over lightly inhabited desert areas, weave over towns and then carry out a “giant swoosh manoeuvre” in its final approach, looping around the cities of Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and approaching its landing site from the east.

The catch of Starship is extraordinarily complex because the spaceship will be falling much faster and from a much higher altitude than the booster.

Like the three previous Super Heavy recoveries, Starship is meant to carry out a controlled descent and nestle vertically between two mechanical “chopstick arms” at the launch site.

Some versions of the Starship spacecraft are designed to launch internet satellites and data centres into orbit, while other iterations will be made to ferry people to the Moon and Mars.

SpaceX Starship Flight 15 launches from Starbase, Texas. Photo / Getty Images

US space agency Nasa is expecting Starship to serve as a lunar lander on its Artemis mission, and administrator Jared Isaacman congratulated SpaceX on Friday for “another spectacular launch” - without mentioning the booster disappointment.

Musk, the world’s richest person, has already revolutionised the space sector with the partially reusable Falcon rockets, which regularly launch satellites and carry astronauts to the International Space Station.

But the Starship project has been plagued by delays as SpaceX grapples with novel engineering challenges, including the unsolved problem of transferring fuel to the spaceship while in orbit - a requirement for any journey to the Moon or Mars.

Following SpaceX’s high-profile stock market debut in June that raised about US$85.7 billion ($155 billion), the company is investing heavily in production and launch capabilities.

During a tour of its 93,000-square-metre factory at Starbase on Friday, SpaceX officials told journalists it now has the capability to produce a spaceship every two weeks and a booster every four weeks.

- AFP