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SpaceX pulls off unprecedented feat, grabs descending rocket with mechanical arms
In one of the most dramatic, high-risk space flights to date, SpaceX launched a gargantuan Super Heavy-Starship rocket on an unpiloted test flight Sunday and then used giant “mechazilla” mechanical arms on the pad gantry to grab the descending first stage out of the sky as the upper stage continued to space.
The spectacular capture, using pincer-like arms more familiarly known as chopsticks, represented a new milestone in SpaceX’s drive to develop fully reusable, quickly re-launchable rockets. It is a technological tour de force unmatched in the history of earlier space programs relying on expendable, throw-away rockets.
The 397-foot-tall rocket blasted off from SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas, flight facility on the Texas Gulf Coast at 8:25 a.m. EDT, putting on a spectacular sunrise show as the booster’s 33 methane-burning Raptor engines ignited with a ground-shaking roar and a torrent of flaming exhaust.
Three minutes and 40 seconds after liftoff, the Super Heavy booster fell away, flipped around and restarted 13 Raptors to reverse course and head back toward the Texas coast as the Starship upper stage continued the climb to space on the power of its six Raptor engines.
The booster’s flight computer was programmed to direct the stage to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico if any problems developed on the rocket or the launch pad capture mechanism.
But no such problems were detected and the Super Heavy continued toward its launch pad, descending and then slowing to a near hover between the two mechanical arms, which then moved in to grab the rocket as its engines shut down. SpaceX employees at the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., burst into cheers and applause.
The remarkable capture, a key element in SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s drive to achieve “rapid reusability,” came as the Starship upper stage was still heading to space and splashdown in the Indian Ocean, simulating a touchdown on shore or, eventually, on the moon or Mars. Splashdown was expected an hour and five minutes after liftoff.
During the rocket’s fourth test flight in June, the extreme temperatures caused significant damage to the Starship’s protective tiles and steering fins. Multiple upgrades and improvements were put in place for Sunday’s flight to eliminate or minimize any such re-entry damage.
The two-stage Super Heavy-Starship, known collectively as the Starship, is the largest, most powerful rocket in the world with twice the liftoff thrust of NASA’s legendary Saturn 5 and nearly twice the power of the agency’s new Space Launch System moon rocket.
The 30-foot-wide Super Heavy first stage, loaded with 6.8 million pounds of liquid oxygen and methane propellants, stands 230 feet tall and is powered by 33 SpaceX-designed Raptor engines generating up to 16 million pounds of thrust. The Starship upper stage measures 160 feet long and carries 2.6 million pounds of propellant to power another six Raptors.
Both stages are designed to be fully reusable, with the Super Heavy flying itself back to its launch pad while the Starship travels to and from Earth orbit, the moon, or, eventually, Mars. The Starship is designed to touch down vertically on its own rocket power at landing sites on Earth and beyond.
But the primary goal of Sunday’s flight was to demonstrate the ability to capture returning Super Heavy boosters on the launch pad where they can be quickly refurbished, refueled and relaunched.
SpaceX perfected first-stage landings with its workhorse Falcon 9 rockets, successfully recovering 352 such boosters to date with powered touchdowns on landing pads or off-shore droneships. The smaller Falcon 9 first stages land on their own, deploying four landing legs a few seconds before touchdown.
Snatching the 230-foot-tall Super Heavy out of the sky with mechanical arms as the rocket descends and hovers right beside its launch gantry seemed an outlandish idea when it was first proposed during the booster’s initial development.
But SpaceX engineers “spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success,” the company said on its website.
“With each flight building on the learnings from the last, testing improvements in hardware and operations across every facet of Starship, we’re on the verge of demonstrating techniques fundamental to Starship’s fully and rapidly reusable design,” the company continued.
SpaceX is under contract with NASA to supply a modified Starship to carry astronauts to landings near the moon’s south pole in the agency’s Artemis program.
To get a Starship lander to the moon, SpaceX must first get it into low-Earth orbit, then launch multiple Super Heavy-Starship “tankers” to refuel the moon-bound Starship for the trip to lunar orbit.
The astronauts will launch atop NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and fly to the moon aboard a Lockheed Martin-built Orion capsule. The crew will transfer to the waiting Starship for the descent to the lunar surface. NASA hopes to send the first woman and the next man to the moon in the 2027-28 timeframe, after an unpiloted Starship moon landing.
Rapid reusability is a key element of the program given the number of Super Heavy-Starships that will be required for a single moon landing. While Sunday’s test flight appeared to go smoothly, multiple flights will be needed to perfect the system and demonstrate the reliability required to carry astronauts.
How long that might take is an open question.
Over the past few weeks, Musk has launched a social media broadside against the Federal Aviation Administration, complaining that the agency’s bureaucracy takes too long to review and approve launch licenses and is, in effect, stifling innovation and slowing the development of the new rocket system.
The FAA did not grant a license to launch Sunday’s test flight until the day before. But this time around, the license covered multiple test flights using roughly the same flight plan.
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Volunteers bring solar power to North Carolina communities still lacking electricity after Hurricane Helene
Two weeks after Hurricane Helene tore through the southeastern United States, killing hundreds of people across multiple states and knocking out electricity for millions, volunteers are bringing solar power to hard-hit areas in North Carolina.
Helene made landfall Sept. 26 as a powerful Category 4 storm, causing disastrous flooding and landslides that destroyed neighborhoods and left at least 225 dead in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. North Carolina’s death toll accounted for around half of all of the victims as the hurricane brought several days of severe, torrential rainfall to the western part of the state. Around 1.5 million electricity customers in that region lost power during the storm, and many remain without it in Helene’s aftermath.
For Bobby Renfro, the constant din of a gas-powered generator is getting to be too much.
It’s difficult to hear the nurses, neighbors and volunteers flowing through the community resource hub he has set up in a former church for his neighbors in Tipton Hill, a crossroads in the Pisgah National Forest north of Asheville. Much worse is the cost: he spent $1,200 to buy it and thousands more on fuel that volunteers drive in from Tennessee.
Turning off their only power source isn’t an option. This generator runs a refrigerator holding insulin for neighbors with diabetes and powers the oxygen machines and nebulizers some of them need to breathe.
The retired railroad worker worries that outsiders don’t understand how desperate they are, marooned without power on hilltops and down in “hollers.”
“We have no resources for nothing,” Renfro said. “It’s going to be a long ordeal.”
About 23,500 customers who lost power in western North Carolina still lacked electricity on Sunday, according to Poweroutage.us. Without it, they can’t keep medicines cold, power medical equipment or pump well water. They can’t recharge their phones or apply for federal disaster aid.
Gabriela Aoun Angueria / AP
Crews from all over the country and even Canada are helping Duke Energy and local electric cooperatives with repairs, but it’s slow going in the dense mountain forests, where some roads and bridges are completely washed away.
“The crews aren’t doing what they typically do, which is a repair effort. They’re rebuilding from the ground up,” said Kristie Aldridge, vice president of communications at North Carolina Electric Cooperatives.
Residents who can get their hands on gas and diesel-powered generators are depending on them, but that is not easy. Fuel is expensive and can be a long drive away. Generator fumes pollute and can be deadly. Small home generators are designed to run for hours or days, not weeks and months.
Now, more help is arriving. Renfro received a new power source this week, one that will be cleaner, quieter and free to operate. Volunteers with the nonprofit Footprint Project and a local solar installation company delivered a solar generator with six 245-watt solar panels, a 24-volt battery and an AC power inverter. The panels now rest on a grassy hill outside the community building.
Renfro hopes his community can draw some comfort and security, “seeing and knowing that they have a little electricity.”
The Footprint Project is scaling up its response to this disaster with sustainable mobile infrastructure. It has deployed dozens of larger solar microgrids, solar generators and machines that can pull water from the air to 33 sites so far, along with dozens of smaller portable batteries.
With donations from solar equipment and installation companies as well as equipment purchased through donated funds, the nonprofit is sourcing hundreds more small batteries and dozens of other larger systems and even industrial-scale solar generators known as “Dragon Wings.”
Will Heegaard and Jamie Swezey are the husband-and-wife team behind Project Footprint. Heegaard founded it in 2018 in New Orleans with a mission of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of emergency responses. Helene’s destruction is so catastrophic, however, that Swezey said this work is more about supplementing generators than replacing them.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Swezey said as she stared at a whiteboard with scribbled lists of requests, volunteers and equipment. “It’s all hands on deck with whatever you can use to power whatever you need to power.”
Gabriela Aoun Angueria / AP
Down near the interstate in Mars Hill, a warehouse owner let Swezey and Heegaard set up operations and sleep inside. They rise each morning triaging emails and texts from all over the region. Requests for equipment range from individuals needing to power a home oxygen machine to makeshift clinics and community hubs distributing supplies.
Local volunteers help. Hayden Wilson and Henry Kovacs, glassblowers from Asheville, arrived in a pickup truck and trailer to make deliveries this week. Two installers from the Asheville-based solar company Sundance Power Systems followed in a van.
It took them more than an hour on winding roads to reach Bakersville, where the community hub Julie Wiggins runs in her driveway supports about 30 nearby families. It took many of her neighbors days to reach her, cutting their way out through fallen trees. Some were so desperate, they stuck their insulin in the creek to keep it cold.
Panels and a battery from Footprint Project now power her small fridge, a water pump and a Starlink communications system she set up. “This is a game changer,” Wiggins said.
The volunteers then drove to Renfro’s hub in Tipton Hill before their last stop at a Bakersville church that has been running two generators. Other places are much harder to reach. Heegaard and Swezey even tried to figure out how many portable batteries a mule could carry up a mountain and arranged for some to be lowered by helicopters.
They know the stakes are high after Heegaard volunteered in Puerto Rico, where Hurricane Maria’s death toll rose to 3,000 as some mountain communities went without power for 11 months. Duke Energy crews also restored infrastructure in Puerto Rico and are using tactics learned there, like using helicopters to drop in new electric poles, utility spokesman Bill Norton said.
The hardest customers to help could be people whose homes and businesses are too damaged to connect, and they are why the Footprint Project will stay in the area for as long as they are needed, Swezey said.
“We know there are people who will need help long after the power comes back,” she said.
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