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Yes. On October 13, 2024, SpaceX caught the Super Heavy booster with the launch tower’s mechanical arms at Starbase, Texas, after Starship’s fifth integrated flight test. The catch was a conditional test objective—not a routine recovery: SpaceX said thousands of vehicle and pad criteria had to be met, and the flight director authorized the attempt only after checking that the booster and tower were in suitable condition.
How SpaceX caught the Super Heavy booster
Super Heavy is Starship’s first stage. After liftoff and stage separation, the booster executed a boostback burn, coasted back toward Starbase, and performed its landing burn. The tower’s large mechanical arms—nicknamed “chopsticks” and part of the launch-and-catch structure SpaceX calls Mechazilla—then caught the descending booster.
SpaceX said this was its first successful booster catch attempt. In its official video description, published November 6, 2024, the company wrote: “And on our first try, Mechazilla caught the booster.” SpaceX also said thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria had to be met before the attempt; it did not publish an exact count. SpaceX’s Flight 5 video and description document the company’s account of the test.
The catch was conditional, not automatic
The tower catch was a planned objective, but launch did not guarantee that SpaceX would attempt it. The flight director made a real-time go/no-go decision after evaluating the condition of both the booster and the tower. The Associated Press reported that if either was not judged to be in good, stable condition, the booster would instead have been directed toward a Gulf landing. AP’s contemporaneous account describes that decision process.
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What happened to Starship after separation?
The upper stage, also called Starship, continued on its own after hot-staging separation. It coasted around the planet, completed a controlled reentry, flipped, and performed its landing burn before splashing down in its target area in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX gave the total duration from launch to splashdown as 1 hour, 5 minutes, and 40 seconds. SpaceX’s Flight 5 mission page provides the company’s flight summary.
| Vehicle | Role in the flight | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Super Heavy | First stage; returned after separation using a boostback and landing burn | Caught by the tower’s arms at Starbase, Texas |
| Starship | Upper stage; continued around the planet after hot staging | Completed a controlled reentry and splashed down in the Indian Ocean |
What the catch demonstrated—and what it did not
The flight demonstrated that SpaceX could catch a returning Super Heavy booster at the launch site on this attempt. SpaceX presents this approach as part of its effort to develop full and rapid reusability. A successful catch, however, is not evidence by itself of routine operations, an established turnaround cadence, or repeated reuse; this flight was a test of the integrated system.
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The distinction matters because the booster catch and the upper stage’s splashdown were separate outcomes. Super Heavy returned to the tower, while Starship continued its test flight and ended it in the ocean.
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How the FAA’s earlier mishap investigation relates
The FAA’s September 8, 2023 announcement concerned the investigation of the April 20, 2023 Starship Super Heavy mishap—not the immediate licensing status for Flight 5, which took place on October 13, 2024. The FAA said the investigation’s final report identified multiple root causes and 63 corrective actions. Those actions included redesigns to prevent leaks and fires, launch-pad redesign, additional design reviews, more analysis and testing of safety-critical systems, and stronger change control. The FAA’s investigation-closure announcement also made clear that closing the investigation did not mean launches could immediately resume: public-safety corrective actions and a license modification were still required at that time.
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Separately, the FAA’s environmental-review material described a mission profile that included the planned return of Super Heavy to the launch site. That description is relevant to the planned profile, but the 2023 mishap announcement should not be read as a statement of Flight 5’s licensing status. The FAA’s Starship stakeholder page provides the agency’s environmental-review information.
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