SpaceX successfully completed its 'latest test flight' – but what happened to the 'main body of the Starship'?

SpaceX successfully launched the latest test flight of Starship on Sunday morning, billed as the most powerful rocket system ever built.

This system is said to one day be used to transport humans to the Moon and Mars.

Liftoff of the Super Heavy rocket booster, topped by the unmanned Starship spacecraft, took place during a 30-minute launch period that began from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, the Telegraph reports.

Watch Starship's fifth flight test https://t.co/LVrCnTv797

- SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 12, 2024

For the first time, this demonstration mission included an ambitious attempt to maneuver the 71-meter rocket booster into a giant landing structure after it burned through most of its fuel and detached from the top of the Starship.

The Super Heavy was "successfully captured" by a pair of massive metal, or "robotic sticks".

Meanwhile, the Starship spacecraft continued to fly itself, using its six onboard engines, before practicing a landing maneuver over the Indian Ocean.

SpaceX does not expect to recover its upper part.

SpaceX eventually wants to capture that, too, the same way.

But this did not happen on the fifth test flight, instead it went down exactly as planned in the Indian Ocean.

Regardless, the goal was to determine how SpaceX could one day recover "Super Heavy boosters" for future missions.

We recall that Starship development has so far focused on a series of increasingly complex test flights, beginning in 2019 with short tests – in which takeoffs were initially made just a few centimeters from the ground.

But recently, the company has moved on to "bold launches" of the Starship capsule and the Super Heavy booster.

After all, SpaceX plans to recover and reuse both the Super Heavy and the upper part of the Starship in the future. /Telegraph/