SpaceX on Saturday will attempt to land its Starship spacecraft for the first time, an engineering feat that would help fulfill Elon Musk's pledge to make the massive rocket fully reusable.
SpaceX launched Starship on its 15th test flight on Friday, sending the spacecraft to orbit with the aim of recovering the full vehicle on land after takeoff — a milestone that's never been achieved before. Ultimately, SpaceX did not recover the rocket's massive booster, but the Starship spacecraft is still on track to perform its novel landing.
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If all goes according to plan, Starship will descend from the sky over SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas after 3 p.m. local time, lowering itself belly first before flipping upright to land next to the vehicle's launch tower.
The tower's two outstretched mechanical arms will then catch Starship, stopping its fall.
The company has already demonstrated the ability to recover Super Heavy, Starship's giant booster, but has yet to try recovering the rocket's second stage in the same way. Earlier in the ongoing mission, the company aborted an attempt to catch Super Heavy, though Starship flew to orbit and deployed a batch of Starlink satellites.
Returning the spaceship component is especially challenging since it must brake from orbital speeds and survive scorching temperatures as it travels through the atmosphere.
SpaceX's Falcon 9, the company's current workhorse rocket, is only partially reusable as some of its hardware is still destroyed after launch.
Starship is the tallest and most powerful rocket ever built, according to SpaceX. Musk's company plans to use Starship to launch upgraded satellites for SpaceX's Starlink service and a fleet of as many as a million spacecraft to serve as data centers for artificial intelligence. Ultimately, the vehicle is supposed to take humans to the moon and eventually start a settlement on Mars.
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No other rocket operator has ever recovered the entirety of one of its orbital rockets. Success would serve as a major proof of concept for Starship, touted by SpaceX as the world's first fully reusable orbital vehicle.
Full reusability is critical for SpaceX's business plan for Starship, which relies on the rocket being able to land after a mission and quickly relaunch.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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