SpaceX Makes History as Mechazilla Catches Returning Starship Mid-Air After Orbital Flight

Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX achieved a historic milestone on Saturday by successfully catching its Starship spacecraft mid-air upon its return from orbit. Following a 22-hour spaceflight, the upper stage descended back to the launch tower in Texas, where massive mechanical arms—dubbed “Mechazilla”—securely grasped the vehicle before it touched the ground.

This marks the first-ever mid-air recovery of a Starship spacecraft, representing a critical breakthrough in Musk’s ambition to develop a completely reusable rocket system.

As the spacecraft emerged from the cloud cover, it reignited its engines to orient itself vertically and slowly guided itself between the tower’s giant arms. Once the engines powered down, the vehicle remained suspended above the launchpad. Sharing footage of the landmark landing on social media, SpaceX announced that Mechazilla had caught Starship and congratulated the entire engineering team.

The 407-foot-tall rocket system had lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas on Friday afternoon, achieving a clean separation between its two stages. Upon reaching orbit, the Starship upper stage deployed 26 next-generation Starlink satellites and completed 14 revolutions around Earth at an altitude of roughly 260 to 265 kilometres. The flight served as SpaceX’s 15th full-scale Starship test mission and its second successful orbital journey.