SpaceX Captures Super Heavy Booster with "Chopsticks"
Starship Flight Test 5 Achieves All Objectives
SpaceX launched Starship Test Flight 5 (IFT-5) this morning at just before 8:30 am EDT after receiving clearance Saturday from the FAA for the launch. And by all measures, the flight was nothing short of spectacular.
"I think it is safe to say we have a ship in the water."
SpaceX Employee on Live Video Feed
The launch of the integrated Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft was reportedly nominal in all respects, with all 33 Raptor engines developing thrust. Booster separation came at 2:48 into the flight, and that's when the excitement really began.
The Super Heavy booster returned to Earth in a way that no other spacecraft before it has achieved. The rocket slowed from almost 2,000 kph to 0 as it was captured by the "chopsticks" on the tower at the launch pad.


Meanwhile, the Starship spacecraft continued to climb to its orbital altitude before returning to Earth as planned. Then, about an hour into the flight, Starship reentered the Earth's atmosphere, completed a successful 'bellyflop' maneuver, and made a soft landing in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia.
Starship flew a similar trajectory as the previous flight test which did not require a deorbit burn for reentry, maximizing public safety while still providing the opportunity to meet the primary objective of a controlled reentry and soft water landing of Starship. "I think it is safe to say we have a ship in the water," the commentators on the launch video shouted over the cheers from mission control.
One of the key upgrades on Starship ahead of flight was a complete rework of its heatshield, with SpaceX technicians spending more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with newer-generation tiles, a backup ablative layer, and additional protections between the flap structures. This massive effort, along with updates to the ship’s operations and software for reentry and landing burn, will look to improve upon the previous flight and bring Starship to a soft splashdown at the target area in the Indian Ocean.
With each flight building on the learnings from the last, testing improvements in hardware and operations across every facet of Starship, we’re on the verge of demonstrating techniques fundamental to Starship’s fully and rapidly reusable design. By continuing to push our hardware in a flight environment, and doing so as safely and frequently as possible, we’ll rapidly bring Starship online and revolutionize humanity’s ability to access space.