SpaceX launched its fifth Starship vehicle Oct. 13, successfully making an unprecedented “catch” of its Super Heavy booster back at the launch site.
The Starship/Super Heavy vehicle lifted off from the company’s Starbase site at Boca Chica, Texas, at 8:25 a.m. Eastern on a mission called Flight 5 by SpaceX.
The main upgrade for this test was an attempt by SpaceX to recover the Super Heavy booster by having it come back to the launch site, where it would be cradled by two mechanical arms, sometimes called “chopsticks,” attached to the launch tower it lifted off from. That required the booster to perform precise boostback and landing burns to guide the stage back to the launch pad.
The Super Heavy booster, known as Booster 12, achieved that feat. The booster descended over the pad and the two arms closed around the top of the booster, just below the grid fins, about seven minutes after liftoff, achieving the desired catch of the booster.
It was amazing to watch, the engines glowing on reentry was insane!
The engines glowing made me reeeeeal nervous
I was waiting for the overheat indicators to pop up
It was crazy to see the engines glowing but the nozzles cool, such an unexpected scene!
Was that atmospheric heating from the re-entry?
Exactly. The everyday astronaut footage shows it particularly vividly.
Purely from compression, not from friction. Honestly, I’m curious how they guard against backflow in the nozzles. A tesla valve would be cool, but I also have no idea how those perform in ultra-high-pressure/flow scenarios