SpaceX made history when it successfully caught the Starship’s Super Heavy booster in “chopstick” arms. Here is why it no longer uses landing gear.
SpaceX had its fifth launch of its Starship on October 13 from its Starbase site in South Texas. The main objective of the mission was to test the Mechazilla launch tower, as it is called. The tower has two metal arms, or chopsticks, designed to catch the spacecraft’s Super Heavy booster.
The chopsticks worked as intended. Approximately seven minutes post-liftoff the Super Heavy booster started hovering in the proximity of the Mechazilla launch tower and was then perfectly caught by the tower’s chopstick arms. This was met with cheers from the SpaceX team, and probably millions of people around the world who witnessed live what might be one of the most important SpaceX missions of all time.
« This is a day for the engineering history books », stated Kate Tice, SpaceX manager of Quality Systems Engineering, during a live broadcast from Space.com. « This is absolutely insane! On the first-ever attempt, we have successfully caught the Super Heavy booster back at the launch tower », Tice added.
Why was this such a significant feat, though? And why did SpaceX ditch landing gear for chopsticks? Here’s what you need to know.
