SpaceX pulled off a feat of technical wizardry on Sunday, not only flying a 233-foot rocket booster back to its launch site, but also catching it out of the air with two giant mechanical arms.
It occurred during the fifth test flight of the Starship rocket and was a huge step forward for the ambitions of SpaceX and its founder, Elon Musk, which include one day transporting people to Mars.
In the more immediate future, NASA is paying SpaceX $4 billion to use Starship to take astronauts to the surface of the moon during two upcoming missions in its Artemis program.
Mr. Musk’s company, in addition to having built and flown the world’s largest and most powerful rocket, has also demonstrated a key technology needed to make the vehicle completely reusable and able to fly again and again quickly, more like a jetliner than a rocket.
Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, congratulated SpaceX on Sunday’s flight in a post on the social media platform X.
“As we prepare to go back to the Moon under Artemis, continued testing will prepare us for the bold missions that lie ahead — including to the South Pole region of the moon and then on to Mars,” he said.