SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said the company would attempt to capture Starship and its booster next month, with the goal of recovering the entire orbital launch system for the first time. If successful, Musk said, the attempt would mark the first time in history that an orbital launch vehicle has been fully recovered.
But he also admitted the possibility of failure. “Success is not guaranteed on these first flights, but I would say success is more likely on the next flight,” Musk said. “And if not, we will have a steady stream of Starship flight attempts until the end of this year and then it will accelerate next year.”
“Success is not guaranteed on these first flights, but I would say success is more likely on the next flight.”
– Elon Musk
Starship is a two-stage system, composed of the Super Heavy booster (first stage) and the Starship spacecraft (second stage). It is approximately 120 meters (about 400 feet) tall with a diameter of 9 meters and is powered by SpaceX Raptor engines that burn liquid methane and liquid oxygen. Starship, first introduced in 2018, was designed to return to the launch site, where launch towers with mechanical “stick” arms catch the vehicle in the air.
Starship’s launch last month marked two firsts for its next-generation rocket: sending the spacecraft into Earth orbit and inserting a few dozen of SpaceX’s larger, more capable V3 satellites into the Starlink constellation for the first time. Still, the launch was not without problems: one Raptor engine shut down prematurely during ascent, causing mission control to adapt and complete the ascent on the remainder. Due to the problem, SpaceX shortened the planned 10-hour, 6-orbit mission to approximately 3 hours and 2 Earth orbits.
The Super Heavy booster splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, while Starship’s upper stage executed a deorbit burn and ended with a fiery vertical splashdown in the Pacific Ocean north of Hawaii. No pieces were recovered.
