SpaceX Catches Starship Booster In Crucial Test

The fifth time was the charm Sunday as SpaceX successfully launched its giant Starship rocket and used mechanical arms to catch the booster engine when it returned to Earth.

Company founder and CEO Elon Musk called the remarkable feat "science fiction without the fiction part," the Associated Press reported.

The empty Starship, which is nearly 400 feet tall, blasted off at sunrise from the southern tip of Texas and arced over the Gulf of Mexico, AP said.

The first-stage "Super Heavy" booster flew back to the launch pad in Boca Chica and re-lit three of its 33 engines to slow its descent, Reuters said.

The booster then lowered itself into the launch tower's metal arms, dubbed "chopsticks," which held it dangling above the ground about seven minutes after it took off, AP said.

"The tower has caught the rocket!!" Musk wrote on his social media website X. "Big step towards making life multiplanetary was made today."

Four previous Starship launches ended with the crafts destroyed by explosions shortly after liftoff or while ditching into the sea, AP said.

On Sunday, the ship took a 90-minute trip into space and appeared intact when it reignited one of its six engines to position itself for a simulated upright ocean landing in the Indian Ocean near western Australia, Reuters said.

After toppling on its side to complete the test, the craft exploded in a fireball but it was unclear if that was intentional or the result of fuel leak, Reuters said.

NASA has ordered two Starships to take astronauts to the moon later this decade and SpaceX intends to eventually use the craft to eventually carry people to Mars.