Two days after it managed to softly and successfully splash down its Starship booster in the Gulf of Mexico, SpaceX has shared fresh footage of the rocket's final moments. The Starship Super Heavy booster is the most powerful rocket in the world because of its 33 Raptor rocket engines, and the fourth Starship test flight on Thursday was the first time SpaceX managed to destroy the booster at will. The test was the fourth flight of the full Starship stack and the Super Heavy booster, and the footage shows Super Heavy gliding down towards the ocean before the feed switches to the onboard cameras for the rocket's final few moments.
SpaceX's Fresh Super Heavy Footage Shows Booster Softly Splashing Down In The Gulf Of Mexico
The latest footage is the first time that SpaceX or anyone else has shared footage of the Super Heavy from an outside camera. SpaceX's early test campaigns for its Falcon 9 rockets saw regular coverage of the rocket from a distance, and this is also the case with the fourth Starship test flight. After liftoff, the first stage propelled the second stage to suborbital space and then fired up its engines multiple times as part of boost back and landing burns.
The booster's return profile is similar to the Falcon 9, as both rockets flip and then rely on a boost back burn to make it to the designated landing zone. Operating Super Heavy is trickier though, since it relies on more engines. These engines have proven problematic during earlier phases of the Starship test campaign, but with time, SpaceX has improved their performance.
Super Heavy landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico pic.twitter.com/lnjCSk2Cz6
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 8, 2024
The booster's landing footage shows the rocket gliding back toward the water and engulfed in a vapor cone before its engines light up for a landing burn. This burn reduces the rocket's speed for a smooth landing, and it is an essential part of the rocket's landing profile since SpaceX eventually plans to catch it with the launch tower.
After engine ignition, the rocket initially appears wobbly before it stabilized itself. At this pint, a fire erupts from its side, however the multi story tall booster nevertheless manages to glid gracefully for a soft splashdown.
SpaceX's Starship is the world's largest and most powerful rocket. During launch, the Super Heavy booster does all the heavy lifting, which also makes it the largest piece of the full Starship system. According to SpaceX, the booster is 232 feet tall and it carries 3,400 tons of fuel at liftoff. The tanks are nearly empty at landing due to the need to reduce weight, and to further reduce the rocket's weight, SpaceX will also jettison its hot stage ring in the future.
A successful soft splashdown also opened up the possibility of a tower catch with the fifth flight. As of now, it appears that this might very well be the case if we believe SpaceX's chief Elon Musk. In a fresh X post, Musk shared that the "next landing will be caught by the tower arms." SpaceX intends to build multiple Starship launch pads, and Musk's statement suggests that he is quite confident in his rocket due to the risks from an unsuccessful tower catch attempt.
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
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