THE NEW YORK TIMES: SpaceX makes history with successful rocket landing in Texas

STARBASE, Texas — SpaceX’s giant Starship spacecraft pulled off a remarkable feat Saturday afternoon, successfully returning from orbit to its launch site in South Texas, where it was caught between two mechanical “chopstick” arms on the launch tower.

For the past decade, SpaceX has successfully landed the boosters of its smaller Falcon 9 rockets and reused them on subsequent launches. But the upper stages of the Falcon 9s are still thrown away each time.

The Starship rocket system is not only much larger than Falcon 9’s, but it was also designed from the start to be fully reusable. Bringing back an upper stage from orbit is a major technical hurdle, and SpaceX was able to pull it off on its first try.

The spacecraft, which is about 170 feet long, was traveling at more than 17,000 mph at an altitude of 170 miles when one of its engines fired briefly, enough to nudge it out of orbit and begin its fall back to Earth.

As it entered the atmosphere, the air pressure heated the belly of the spacecraft and slowed its descent. When it reached the denser parts of the atmosphere, flaps at the front and back steered it as it passed over Mexico before dropping from the clouds over Starbase, SpaceX’s launch facility at the southern tip of Texas.

With the final landing burn, Starship pivoted to a vertical position, hovered and then slid between the mechanical arms, which gently closed against it.

The 15th test flight of Starship launched Friday afternoon. Once in orbit, the upper-stage Starship spacecraft deployed 26 of the company’s next-generation Starlink satellites.

SpaceX had hoped to catch the bottom half of the rocket, the giant booster stage known as Super Heavy. SpaceX has already caught the booster on three earlier test flights. A total success would have been the company’s first-ever “double-catch” maneuver.

But after finishing its part of Flight 15, the booster detected a problem with its guidance and navigation control and instead performed a simulated landing over the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts say SpaceX is further away from showing that its spacecraft’s heat shield and engines would be rapidly ready to launch again after taking a beating through the atmosphere.

Still, today’s success was a crucial step in SpaceX’s quest to make reusable rockets.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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