SpaceX cancels attempt to catch the rocket that powers Starship

()— The Super Heavy rocket booster was scheduled to make another impressive landing, as it was caught mid-air by SpaceX’s Mechazilla launch tower last month. However, SpaceX chose to land the booster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The company surprised the public when it managed to land the Super Heavy booster after flight during its first attempt in October. But that wasn’t necessary today, and SpaceX has always said it would evaluate flight data and make a decision on a landing attempt based on real-time flight data.

SpaceX did not give a reason other than to say the criteria for attempting the capture were met. Even so, the Super Heavy tried its landing maneuver, although on water. That allows SpaceX engineers to collect data, adding to a growing trove of information that could help inform employees on how to improve for the next flight.

However, the superior spacecraft Starship has separated from the Super Heavy, fired its own engines, and continues to cruise through space.

Unlike the October test flight, SpaceX will attempt to push the spacecraft to its limits. The goal is to use this real-world scenario to determine exactly how and when Starship could fail in future situations when SpaceX needs to be more careful, that is, in situations where humans or satellites are on board.

That means Starship may not reach the ocean in one piece, or at least not as gracefully as it did during the last test launch.

US President-elect Donald Trump would attend the event at the company’s headquarters in Brownsville, Texas, according to three people familiar with his plans. Trump was expected to be accompanied by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, in another example of Musk’s growing role in Trump’s orbit.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which licenses the launch of commercial rockets, stated that it did not have to undertake the lengthy review process for a launch license alteration because the trajectory was expected to The flight pattern of this week’s test launch closely resembles that of a previous test flight.

“The FAA determined that SpaceX met all safety, environmental and other licensing requirements for the suborbital test flight,” the agency said in a statement. “The FAA determined that the changes requested by SpaceX for (this Tuesday’s test flight) are within the scope of what has been previously analyzed.”

Starship’s fifth integrated test flight launched on October 13. It attracted international attention thanks to SpaceX’s ambitious attempt to maneuver the 71-meter-tall Super Heavy back onto a gigantic landing structure after the booster detached from the Starship.

A pair of giant metal tongs, which SpaceX calls “chopsticks,” successfully caught the Super Heavy in mid-flight.

“Starship’s fifth test flight was a pivotal moment in the evolution toward a fully and rapidly reusable launch system,” the company said in a statement.

Starship is considered crucial to SpaceX’s founding mission of landing humans on Mars for the first time.

For NASA’s Artemis program, SpaceX has government contracts worth up to nearly $4 billion to complete the task of developing a cost-effective space transportation system.

When the countdown clock hits zero this Tuesday afternoon, the Super Heavy rocket will ignite its 33 powerful Raptor engines and propel the Starship, which is mounted on the rocket, into space.

After using up most of its fuel and separating from the spacecraft, the rocket will reverse course and return to the launch point. The booster will attempt to make another precision landing on the arms of the launch and landing structure — nicknamed “Mechazilla” by Musk — at the company’s Starbase facility.

If the flight test team deems conditions favorable for a landing attempt, the rocket should touch down about seven minutes after launch.

For its part, the Starship will turn on its six engines before entering a rest phase while it flies through space. The capsule will briefly restart its engines about half an hour later, before preparing for reentry, the process by which it returns to the densest part of Earth’s atmosphere.

During Starship’s fourth integrated test flight in early June, the spacecraft suffered significant damage, losing numerous thermal tiles designed to protect the vehicle from the intense temperatures caused by the pressure and friction of reentry.

“Due to the loss of the tiles… the front flaps were so melted that it was like trying to control them with little skeleton hands,” Musk said after the mission, adding that the fourth flight landed about 9.7 kilometers from its planned landing site in the Indian Ocean.

However, SpaceX made significant progress during Starship’s fifth integrated test flight in mid-October.

Before that mission, SpaceX conducted what it called a “complete overhaul of Starship’s heat shield, in which SpaceX technicians spent more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with state-of-the-art plates, a layer “ablative reinforcement and additional protections between the fin structures.”

“In 2025, SpaceX plans to conduct a long-duration flight test and a propellant transfer flight test,” according to a recent report from NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).

Demonstrating the ability to launch a starship into orbit and then reunite it with a fuel-carrying tanker vehicle is essential to the success of NASA’s Artemis program.

For the human moon landing mission, called Artemis III, Starship may have to dock with more than a dozen fuel tankers before continuing its mission to the lunar surface.

SpaceX will also face a “critical design review” of the Artemis III mission next summer, according to the OIG.

–’s Kristen Holmes and Ross Levitt contributed to this article.