SpaceX founder expects Starship’s upper stage catch by the end of the year

SpaceX founder and CEO, Elon Musk, said that the company will attempt Starship’s upper stage catch by the end of the year if everything goes right with upcoming flight tests.

The Starship program is designed to comply with max reusability and consists of two reusable stages. But hardware recovery is essential to this goal, which can only be achieved by catching these two stages via mechazilla tower.

Since flight 5, SpaceX is attempting booster catch and successfully caught it for three times, excluding Flight 6. With these three flights, the Starship team already reused Raptor engines and Flight 9 will include a fully reusable booster for the first time featuring 29 out of 33 flight proven Raptor engines.

Launch Tower at Boca Chica Starbase Facility caught Starship 5 Booster after final burn (Source – SpaceX)

However, things aren’t taking the right turn with the upper stage. Through the past eight flights, SpaceX has measured the complete circle twice before switching to a new ship with performance improvements.

The ship has to complete its in-orbit milestones and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere to land in the Indian Ocean. Previously, SpaceX aimed to attempt a tower catch in the first half, but due to the recent two failures, this objective doesn’t seem possible in a near term.

Instead, the engineers are patching problems in the ship’s engine section, which has become the root cause of Flight 7 and 8’s demise.

Starship’s upper stage catch will require SpaceX to achieve an Ocean splashdown with full hardware safety. In this direction, Flight 9 will play a pivotal role and help the company decide on the next phase of development.

(source)