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Elon Musk's SpaceX achieved a monumental milestone in space exploration on Sunday, successfully capturing the returning booster of its colossal Starship rocket using the mechanical arms on its launch pad. This unprecedented feat marks a significant step forward in SpaceX's pursuit of reusable vehicles for lunar and Martian missions, garnering widespread acclaim, including congratulations from Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
The Starship booster, towering at 232 feet (71 meters), was gracefully snagged by the launch tower's massive metal arms, aptly dubbed 'chopsticks,' after its descent. This marks the first time SpaceX has managed to recover the rocket booster directly on its launch pad, eliminating the need for landing on floating ocean platforms. This remarkable engineering achievement has drawn praise from millions, including tech luminaries like Sundar Pichai.
Pichai expressed his admiration on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, writing: 'Huge congrats, have to admit, rewatched the video many times over, incredible to see!'. Similarly, industrialist Anand Mahindra lauded the feat, proclaiming: 'This Sunday, I’m happy to be a couch potato if it means that I get to watch history being made. This experiment may just be the critical moment when space travel was democratised and made routine.'
The Starship, standing at a towering height of nearly 400 feet (121 meters), embarked on its journey from southern Texas at sunrise, soaring over the Gulf of Mexico. While this launch followed a similar trajectory to its predecessors, previous attempts had met with unfortunate endings, either shortly after liftoff or upon impact with the sea. This successful maneuver signifies a significant advancement in SpaceX's strategy of rigorous rocket testing, ultimately aimed at developing a fully reusable vehicle for ambitious missions to the Moon and Mars.
This achievement signifies a monumental leap forward for SpaceX and the broader space exploration landscape. The ability to recover and reuse rockets, a concept central to SpaceX's vision, holds immense potential for cost reduction and increased accessibility to space. This historic feat not only showcases the incredible progress made by SpaceX but also ignites an even greater sense of anticipation for future lunar and Martian missions, a future that appears closer than ever before.
Source: Sundar Pichai congratulates Elon Musk for Starship rocket feat: ‘Have to admit…’