SpaceX wants to use the launch arm to capture the upper stage of Starship next year

SpaceX made spaceflight history on October 13 with the fifth test flight of its Starship rocket. About seven minutes after liftoff, the first stage of Starship, called Super Heavy, returned to the launchpad, where it was clamped by the “wand-shaped” arm of the launch tower.

SpaceX's further goals

That's a huge step forward for SpaceX, but Elon Musk's company wants to go even further with the upper stage of Starship. That's the 50-meter-high stage of Starship, which SpaceX is calling simply Ship.

In a statement about the plan for the coming months, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said in a post on X on October 15: "Hopefully, by early next year, we will also catch up with the ship." Obviously, if this goal is successful, this will continue to be another breakthrough for Elon Musk in particular and the world in general in bringing humans to conquer space.

SpaceX is developing a 400-foot-tall, fully reusable Starship spacecraft to take people and cargo to the moon and Mars, as well as perform other spaceflight feats. The company says things are going pretty well, with Starship’s two most recent test flights on June 6 and October 13 both being complete successes.

So it should come as no surprise that SpaceX plans to push the envelope, returning the ship safely to the launch pad on one or more upcoming test flights. Previous missions have seen the Starship's upper stage land in the Indian Ocean.

VOV.VN - SpaceX has successfully "recaptured" the Super Heavy rocket - the first stage of the Starship complex - for the first time in history when it successfully returned this stage to the launch pad during a test launch that took place on the same day, turning a strange idea into reality.

Source: https://vov.vn/cong-nghe/tin-cong-nghe/spacex-muon-dung-canh-tay-be-phong-bat-gon-tang-tren-cua-starship-vao-nam-sau-post1128902.vov