SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has shared ambitious plans for Starship’s fifth launch. After a successful fourth launch earlier this month, the mega-rocket plans to complete its next test launch in July. This time, however, Musk said the company plans to try to capture the rocket on landing so it can reuse the super-heavy rocket.
SpaceX will try to catch Starship
The fact that SpaceX has such ambitious plans for Starship’s fifth launch has to do with the company’s desire to take full advantage of Starship’s capabilities.
Thanks to the success of the Falcon 9 series, the company has proven time and again that it can successfully build reusable rockets. But because the Super Heavy rocket has no 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 began in 2021 and will be about 146 meters high when completed. The tower will have a series of robotic arms that will try to catch the rocket during Starship’s fifth launch attempt.
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SpaceX says two stages will be separated in flight during the launch. At that point the Super Heavy rocket will return to the launch site, restart its engines to slow the vehicle down, and then the arms on the tower will attempt to capture the rocket before it settles back into its stowage bay.
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 in the water.
Starship is also facing some environmental concerns, so successfully executing this landing will be a major achievement to prove that the mega-rocket is indeed the answer to humanity’s future space exploration plans.
