SpaceX's spacecraft on Saturday returned from a 22-hour voyage in orbit and descended for the first time into the grasp of giant mechanical arms at the Texas tower it was launched from a day earlier, a catch that is essential to the company's decade-long effort to develop a fully reusable rocket.
The 171-foot-tall (52-metre) Starship fell out of thick clouds over SpaceX's Starbase launch site, reignited its engines to flip itself vertical and slowly descended into the tower's “Mechazilla” arms, engines still roaring.
Charred from the blazing heat of its return from space, the ship shut down its engines and hung still after the rocket system's longest mission yet.
The towering two-stage rocket's Super Heavy booster - the rocket's bottom half - carried Starship to space on Friday (13 November), lifting off from SpaceX's Starbase, Texas, facilities.
That booster had failed to make a similar return to the launch pad some 10 minutes after liftoff, nixing SpaceX's plan to recover both parts of the rocket for the first time.
The Starship upper stage's successful return after orbiting Earth 14 times more than 22.5 hours marked a major engineering milestone in the rocket's rapid, multibillion-dollar development.
After deploying 26 Starlink satellites in orbit Friday night while cruising some 260 km (161 miles) in altitude, Starship on Saturday fired one of its engines to begin an atmospheric plunge while flying eastward over the Pacific Ocean.
It faced blistering heat as its orbital speed of some 17,000 miles per hour (27,358.848 km/h) slowed to a supersonic free-fall in the skies above SpaceX's Starbase facilities on the Gulf Coast of south Texas.
Musk and SpaceX engineers began inspecting the ship within hours of its catch.
“Ship 42 looks great!” Musk wrote on X, posting photos and videos from the launch tower.
SpaceX's dominance in the global launch industry is centered on its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which has launched more than 700 times since 2010. That rocket's first stage is reusable, but its second stage - the part that delivers payloads into orbit - is discarded into the ocean after each flight.
With Starship, Musk wants a rocket system that can fly to space and back in a manner and tempo akin to commercial airplanes, with minimal refurbishment between flights.
Though Saturday's Starship recovery is a key milestone in that effort, SpaceX has yet to recover both Starship stages in a single mission, which would mark the first-ever return of an orbital launch system.
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Iran’s Assembly of Experts has backed withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and overhauling the country’s defence doctrine, calling both steps essential to national security and deterrence.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration lifted a nationwide ground stop on Friday (13 November) after a communications failure at air traffic control centres caused chaos at airports and triggered the longest nationwide shutdown since the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
More than 30 people have been taken to hospital after a cargo ship collided with a passenger cruise docked on the Mississippi River in New Orleans on Friday (13 November).
Europe will send a team of diplomats to Ukraine peace talks rather than a single envoy, EU leaders agreed on Friday at the end of a summit in Dublin.
Saudi Arabia said it intercepted two Houthi ballistic missiles targeting Riyadh and three drones in its oil-rich Eastern Province on Sunday (15 November), as Iran's Revolutionary Guards claimed separate attacks on a U.S. military facility in Bahrain.
The Philippines and Australia signed a new defence cooperation arrangement in Manila on Sunday, aimed at accelerating joint military activities and strengthening security ties amid tensions with China in the South China Sea.
Southeast Asian leaders opened the 49th ASEAN Summit in Manila Sunday, with Myanmar's crisis, security and economic uncertainty dominating talks. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. called for continued engagement with Myanmar and urged a stronger response to conflict and energy disruptions.
U.S. air travel is not expected to return to normal schedules until late on Sunday (15 November), the head of the FAA said, as the aviation system gradually recovers from a nationwide flight shutdown that officials blamed on routine maintenance gone awry.
Irish army bomb disposal experts safely neutralised an explosive device discovered in central Dublin on Friday (13 November), close to where European leaders gathered for dinner the previous evening during a two-day summit. Police have launched an investigation into the incident.
Pope Leo visited a remote town in Peru's western Andes on Saturday (14 November), returning to a community he once served as bishop during a deeply personal stop on his 12-day South America tour.
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