SUMMARY
On October 13th, 2024, SpaceX successfully completed its fifth Starship rocket test flight, advancing efforts to develop fully reusable rockets. The 121-meter-tall Starship, designed to send people and supplies to the moon and Mars, launched from a base in Texas at 7:25 a.m. local time. In a critical achievement, SpaceX managed to catch the first-stage booster—responsible for propelling the rocket off the ground—with mechanical arms, dubbed “chopsticks,” as it returned to the launch site. The upper-stage spacecraft coasted through space for about 20 minutes before reentering Earth's atmosphere and crashing into the Indian Ocean, where it exploded on impact. This mission was the most ambitious yet, following four previous test flights between April 2023 and June 2024. Elon Musk celebrated the successful recovery of the booster on X, calling it a “big step towards making life multiplanetary.”
