Incredible photos showed Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship perform its breakthrough “belly flop” maneuver as it splashed down in the Indian Ocean Sunday morning. And that wasn’t even the coolest part of the test flight.
The perfectly executed landing followed the Starship’s 232-foot Falcon Super Heavy booster rocket gracefully returning to the launchpad seven minutes after launch, where it was “caught” by a pair of enormous mechanical arms nicknamed “Mechazilla.”
The successful test flight, which took off at sunrise at SpaceX’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, represented an engineering first and provided a glimpse into the future of space travel, starting with a pair of manned NASA missions to the moon in 2026
“As we prepare to go back to the Moon under Artemis, continued testing will prepare us for the bold missions that lie ahead,” he wrote.
Sunday’s flight was the fifth test launch of the nearly 400-foot Starship rocket, which the company says it plans to use to ferry supplies as well as astronauts to the moon and, one day, Mars.
SpaceX launched four previous Starship test flights, starting in April 2023, notching steady progress with each attempt.
During the first two attempts, in April and November of last year, engine failures derailed the mission before the craft got off the launchpad.
In March the Starship was successfully launched, but the Falcon Super Heavy booster was destroyed about 460 meters above the ocean and did not return to Earth as planned. The Starship is believed to have disintegrated before its planned splashdown.