'Holy Grail of spaceflight': SpaceX pulls off first-ever midair 'catch' of Starship returning from orbit

Elon Musk-owned SpaceX on Saturday (local time) pulled off the first-ever 'catch' of a spaceship, marking a milestone in the space industry's decades-long pursuit of fully reusable rocket systems.

SpaceX officials said Saturday's catch demonstrates the full reusability of Starship, crucial for rapid and low-cost recycling. Although Friday's booster recovery failed, the company had already made three previous booster catches, validating the technique.

SpaceX 'catches spaceship

According to Reuters, the 171-foot-tall Starship fell out of thick clouds over SpaceX's Starbase launch site, reignited engines to flip itself vertical, and slowly descended into the tower's "Mechazilla" arms, engines still roaring. Charred from the blazing heat of its return from space, the ship shut down its engines and hung still after the rocket system's longest mission yet.

The world's largest and most powerful rocket -- a 124-meter behemoth -- blasted off late Friday afternoon from SpaceX's Starship base near the US-Mexican border. Separating neatly from its booster before things went awry, the upper-stage spacecraft soared into orbit and released 26 advanced Starlink satellites.

Starship continued circling the world 265 kilometers up, with live views of itself and Earth streaming down via Starlink. The spacecraft completed 14 laps around Earth, outshining the previous mission's one to two laps.

"That was the Holy Grail of spaceflight, plummeting through fire to be snatched out of the air by steel. We caught a Starship and now, everything changes," SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said.

Lars Blackmore, a senior SpaceX engineer, said Starship flew over sparsely inhabited desert areas, wove over towns and then carried out a "giant swoosh maneuver" in its final approach, looping around the cities of Texas' Rio Grande Valley and approaching its landing site from the east.

However, it wasn't the clean finish SpaceX had hoped for as the first-stage booster exploded shortly after Friday's liftoff from Texas. According to the Associated Press, the booster's wreckage remained in the Gulf of Mexico, cordoned off by buoys, as the stainless steel, bullet-shaped spacecraft lowered itself upright at the launch pad.

The Starship spacecraft that gives the rocket system its name orbited Earth 14 times and deployed 26 satellites for Musk's Starlink internet constellation during its 22-hour journey.

Until now, SpaceX had captured returning booster rockets three times. However, the "catch" of Starship was extraordinarily complex because the spaceship fell much faster and from a much higher altitude compared to boosters.

With Starship, Musk wants a rocket system that can fly to space and back in a manner and tempo akin to commercial airplanes.