SpaceX to attempt first catch of Starship upper stage

SpaceX planned to launch Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, from southern Texas on Friday and to try for the first time to catch its upper stage as it comes back from orbit, a maneuver the company says would complete the recovery of an orbital launch system.

Liftoff from Starbase, on the Gulf of Mexico coast, was scheduled for 4:45pm local time. The 124-metre vehicle's lower stage, Super Heavy, is to separate and return to the tower about six and a half minutes later, lowering itself into the mechanical arms SpaceX has used to catch it on three previous flights.

The upper stage, the ship itself, is to carry on to orbit and release 26 satellites for Starlink, the internet constellation that has become a major revenue source for the company. It is then to circle Earth 14 times and come back about 22 hours after launch, descending faster and from far higher than the booster does.

"If successful, this will mark the first full recovery of an orbital launch system and a breakthrough moment in making Starship a reliable, rapidly reusable rocket," SpaceX said.

Reusing an orbital ship means surviving the heat of reentry and returning to service without extensive refurbishment. Clayton Swope, an aerospace specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, called full reusability the "Holy Grail" of the industry and said nobody has managed it yet, including the space shuttle, which he described as "kind of a compromise because a lot of the vehicle wasn't reusable."

This is the 15th Starship test flight. The programme has run years behind schedule, and Nasa is counting on the ship as a lunar lander for its Artemis missions. SpaceX still has to master transferring fuel between spacecraft in orbit, a requirement for any journey to the Moon or Mars. Its first orbital Starship flight in September was cut short by an engine problem. The company, which listed on the stock market in June, is building additional launch sites in Louisiana and Florida.

The US Federal Aviation Administration had not given final approval for Friday's flight as of late Thursday. SpaceX has said it will attempt the catch only if conditions are optimal, and it has changed test plans at short notice before under Elon Musk's "fail fast" approach of learning from crashes and other mishaps.