• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Watch SpaceX’s “Mechazilla” Perform Ridiculous “Chopstick” Maneuver For The First Time

October 14, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

SpaceX has achieved an impressive feat as a Super Heavy booster was caught using mechanical arms as it returned to its launchpad. 

Creating rockets and launching them into space is an expensive and time-intensive business. SpaceX has been working on reusable rocket systems, landing rockets vertically on their launchpads safely for reuse. While plenty of successful landings of boosters have taken place, the firm set its sights on something even more ambitious: capturing their Super Heavy booster using mechanical arms, dubbed “Mechazilla”. Catching the booster, used to launch Starship, would allow boosters to be refueled and reused more quickly, as well as reduce the need for hardware necessary for landing on the ground.

Advertisement

In the fifth test of Starship on Sunday, SpaceX made its first attempt at using the system to capture the Super Heavy booster. Prior to the launch, it was not clear that the test of Mechazilla would go ahead, with options for the booster to instead “soft-land” in the Gulf of Mexico. During the flight, engineers made the call to go ahead with the test – and the result was pretty impressive.

“On our first try, Mechazilla caught the booster,” SpaceX explained after the test. “Following a successful liftoff, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and coast, the Super Heavy booster performed its landing burn and was caught by the chopstick arms of the launch and catch tower at Starbase.”

ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.

Systems like this could enable much faster reuse times as we continue to explore space. It is no easy task, involving very precise burns to slow and maneuver the booster – but one that appears to have been successful on the first try.

Advertisement

“Just inspected the Starship booster, which the arms have now placed back in its launch mount. Looks great! A few outer engine nozzles are warped from heating & some other minor issues, but these are easily addressed,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk added on X (Twitter). “Starship is designed to achieve reflight of its rocket booster ultimately within an hour after liftoff. The booster returns within ~5 minutes, so the remaining time is reloading propellant and placing a ship on top of the booster.”

SpaceX is planning further tests of the reusable launch vehicle systems, which may one day be used for human spaceflight to the Moon, or maybe even Mars.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Near Space Labs closes $13M Series A to send more Earth imaging robots to the stratosphere
  2. Berlin police investigating ‘Havana syndrome’ cases at U.S. embassy – Spiegel
  3. What Is An Adam’s Apple?
  4. Nearest Young Earth-Sized Planet Is Half Lava And Metal As Hell

Source Link: Watch SpaceX's "Mechazilla" Perform Ridiculous "Chopstick" Maneuver For The First Time

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Psilocybin Shows Potential In Slowing Human Cell Aging And Increasing Lifespan In Mice
  • Blue Sharks’ Freaky Tooth-Skin Makes It Possible For Them To Change Color To Green And Even Gold
  • Summer In The Northern Hemisphere Will Be 15 Minutes Shorter Than Last Year’s
  • Your Ability To Be Funny May Not Be Inherited After All, And That’s Really Unexpected
  • New Interstellar Comet Tracked To Its Origin Region: “It’s Much Older Than The Solar System”
  • ChatGPT Gets “Absolutely Wrecked” By An Atari Video Chess Game Built In 1979
  • Tick Bites Are Nearing Record Highs In Some US States – Why Is This Season So Bad?
  • Rivals Wanted To Erase This Great Female Pharaoh From History, But Is That The Whole Story?
  • Neanderthals Repurposed Cave Lion Bones Into “Multifunctional Tools” 130,000 Years Ago
  • Jumping Spiders: With Cute Eyes And Complex Behavior, They’re Nature’s Most Charismatic Arachnids
  • Scientists Dropped A Cow Carcass 1,629 Meters Into The South China Sea – And 8 Unexpected Visitors Turned Up
  • A Colossal Moa: One Of The Biggest Birds Ever To Walk The Earth Becomes 5th “De-Extinction” Species
  • Aliens Up To 200 Light-Years Away Could Find Earth Thanks To Our Airports
  • For The First Time, Wild Rays Have Been Filmed Telling Sharks To “Back Off!” With Electric Shocks
  • Gonorrhea Vaccines, New Antibiotics, And At-Home Testing: What’s The Latest In STI Research?
  • What NASA’s Galileo Spacecraft Saw As It Plunged Into Jupiter
  • Very Hungry “Plastivore” Caterpillars Get Fat From Eating Plastic
  • “Nobody Expected This”: Earth’s Rotation Will Speed Up Tomorrow, Bucking The Downward Trend
  • Chimps Are Sticking Grass In Their Ears And Rears As They Embrace “Pointless” Fad
  • Hui Te Rangiora: Old Māori Legend Suggests They May Have Discovered Antarctica 1,000 Years Before Europeans
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version