Elon Musk jubilant as SpaceX Starship makes flawless flight, splash-down — and a first-ever ‘Mechazilla’ booster recovery

Incredible photos showed Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship perform its breakthrough “belly flop” maneuver as it splashed down in the Indian Ocean Sunday morning. And that wasn’t even the coolest part of the test flight.

The perfectly executed landing followed the Starship’s 232-foot Falcon Super Heavy booster rocket gracefully returning to the launchpad seven minutes after launch, where it was “caught” by a pair of enormous mechanical arms nicknamed “Mechazilla.”

The successful test flight, which took off at sunrise at SpaceX’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, represented an engineering first and provided a glimpse into the future of space travel, starting with a pair of manned NASA missions to the moon in 2026.

“The tower has caught the rocket!!” Musk triumphantly wrote on X. “Science fiction without the fiction part.”

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship makes spectacular splash-down after successful test flight — and a new milestone

SpaceX engineers were also ecstatic about the historic landing, and didn’t hold back on social media.

“I couldn’t say this on air but HOLY S–T,” wrote SpaceX’s Kate Tice on the Musk-owned platform in a post sharing a video of the launch.

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“I am crying right now,” wrote the company’s Dan Huot.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson also took to X to extend his congratulations to the company.

“As we prepare to go back to the Moon under Artemis, continued testing will prepare us for the bold missions that lie ahead,” he wrote.

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Sunday’s flight was the fifth test launch of the nearly 400-foot Starship rocket, which the company says it plans to use to ferry supplies as well as astronauts to the moon and, one day, Mars.

SpaceX launched four previous Starship test flights, starting in April 2023, notching steady progress with each attempt.

During the first two attempts, in April and November of last year, engine failures derailed the mission before the craft got off the launchpad.

In March the Starship was successfully launched, but the Falcon Super Heavy booster was destroyed about 460 meters above the ocean and did not return to Earth as planned. The Starship is believed to have disintegrated before its planned splashdown.

The most recent test launch, held in June, saw a successful launch and a controlled splashdown of its booster in the Gulf of Mexico and the craft itself in the Indian Ocean.

After completing several upcoming test flights, Starship’s next frontier will be landing an unmanned craft on the moon. Afterward, NASA says it hopes to send the first crewed mission — including the first-ever woman — to the moon sometime between 2027-2028.

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