Enlarge / Not a simulation. Plasma pours over the aerosurfaces of SpaceX’s Starship during reentry high over the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX demonstrated Thursday that its towering Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket might one day soon be recovered and reused in the manner Elon Musk has envisioned for the future of space exploration.
For the first time, both elements of the nearly 400-foot-tall (121-meter) rocket not only launched successfully from SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas, but also came back to Earth for controlled splashdowns at sea. This demonstration is a forerunner to future Starship test flights that will bring the
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