{"id":17906,"date":"2026-11-14T22:46:15","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T22:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/14\/spacex-pulls-off-first-ever-spaceship-catch\/"},"modified":"2026-11-14T22:46:15","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T22:46:15","slug":"spacex-pulls-off-first-ever-spaceship-catch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/14\/spacex-pulls-off-first-ever-spaceship-catch\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX pulls off first-ever spaceship \u2018catch\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"SpaceX<\/p>\n

Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX on Saturday carried out the first-ever recovery of a spaceship, pulling off a successful \u201ccatch\u201d of its Starship vessel as it returned to its launch site after a day in orbit.<\/p>\n

The spaceship emerged from a cloudy sky after withstanding the extreme heat of re-entering the Earth\u2019s atmosphere, and descended slowly over Starbase before slipping smoothly between mechanical \u201cchopstick arms\u201d above Launch Pad 2.<\/p>\n

The feat marked a milestone in the space industry\u2019s decades-long pursuit of fully reusable rocket systems \u2014 a goal that can drastically reduce mission costs and make more frequent launches possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the Holy Grail of space flight, plummeting through fire to be snatched out of the air by steel. We caught a Starship and now, everything changes,\u201d SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said.<\/p>\n

Crowds gathered on the Gulf of Mexico beach near Starbase broke into cheers as the spaceship eased into its high-tech nest on the\u00a015th test flight of the world\u2019s biggest and most powerful rocket system.<\/p>\n

This time the Starship spacecraft that gives the rocket system its name orbited Earth 14 times and deployed 26 satellites for Musk\u2019s Starlink satellite internet constellation during its 22-hour journey.<\/p>\n

Until now SpaceX had captured returning booster rockets three times. However, the\u00a0\u201ccatch\u201d of Starship was extraordinarily complex because the spaceship fell much faster and from a much higher altitude than boosters do.<\/p>\n

Clayton Swope, an aerospace expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called the mission a \u201chuge technical achievement and proves the whole idea of Starship as a fully reusable spaceship can work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s see how quickly they can do it again,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u2018Giant swoosh\u2019<\/h4>\n

The vessel\u2019s path home was carefully mapped out by engineers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to get back to the east coast of Texas, you have to fly over the entire continent to get back there. So inevitably, you\u2019re flying over land and we spend a lot of time figuring out the safest way to do that,\u201d senior SpaceX engineer Lars Blackmore said.<\/p>\n

Starship flew over sparsely inhabited desert areas, wove over towns and then carried out a \u201cgiant swoosh maneuver\u201d in its final approach, looping around the cities of Texas\u2019 Rio Grande Valley and approaching its landing site from the east.<\/p>\n

Some versions of Starship are designed to launch internet satellites and data centers into orbit, while other iterations will be made to ferry people to the Moon and Mars.<\/p>\n

US space agency NASA is expecting Starship to serve as a lunar lander on its Artemis mission. On Saturday, Administrator Jared Isaacman congratulated Musk and SpaceX.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was almost magic\u2026 Making more believers by the day\u2026 one step closer to (the Moon),\u201d he said on X.<\/p>\n

Refueling challenge<\/h4>\n

Musk, the world\u2019s richest person, has already revolutionized the space sector with the partially reusable Falcon rockets, which regularly launch satellites and carry astronauts to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

But the Starship project has been plagued by delays as SpaceX grapples with novel engineering challenges, including the unsolved problem of transferring fuel to the spaceship while in orbit \u2014 a requirement for any journey to the Moon or Mars.<\/p>\n

It will also need to further fine-tune the Super Heavy booster, which ran into a technical issue Friday on its descent, forcing a diversion to the Gulf of Mexico just off the launch site. It, too, was supposed to have been caught by the \u201cchopstick arms.\u201d<\/p>\n

The booster automatically self-destructed \u2014 a fireball erupting from the booster \u2014 before hitting the water.<\/p>\n

Following SpaceX\u2019s high-profile stock market debut in June that raised about $85.7 billion, the company is investing heavily in production and launch capabilities.<\/p>\n

During a tour of its million-square-foot (93,000-square-meter) factory at Starbase on Friday, SpaceX officials told journalists it now has the capability to produce a spaceship every two weeks and a booster every four weeks.<\/p>\n

Vanguard News<\/a><\/p>\n

The post SpaceX pulls off first-ever spaceship \u2018catch\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Vanguard News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source: <\/p>\n

Vanguard News<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX on Saturday carried out the first-ever recovery of a spaceship, pulling off a successful \u201ccatch\u201d of its Starship vessel as it returned to its launch site after… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17907,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}