SpaceX conducted its most daring test flight yet of the giant Starship rocket on Sunday, hauling the returning booster back to the launch pad using mechanical arms.

At nearly 400 feet (121 meters) high, the empty spacecraft launched at sunrise from the southern tip of Texas near the Mexican border. It flew in an arc over the Gulf of Mexico like the four spacecraft before it, which were destroyed either shortly after launch or when ditching in the sea. The last flight in June was the most successful to date, completing the flight without exploding.

This time, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has increased the challenge and the risk. The company returned the first stage booster to land at the launch pad from which it had launched seven minutes earlier. The launch tower was equipped with monstrous metal arms called rods that caught the descending 232-foot (71-meter) booster.

“The tower caught the rocket!!” Musk announced about X: “Science fiction without the fiction part.”

The company’s employees screamed with joy, jumping to their feet and pumping their fists in the air as the launch vehicle slowly lowered itself into the arms of the launch tower.

“Even today, what we just saw is magical,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot observed from near the launch site. “I’m shaking right now.”

“Folks, this is a day for the technology history books,” added SpaceX’s Kate Tice from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

An hour later, the empty spacecraft, which was launched on the carrier rocket, made a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean as planned, thereby contributing to the success of the day.

It was up to the flight director to decide in real time using manual controls whether to attempt the landing. SpaceX said that both the launch vehicle and the launch tower must be in good and stable condition. Otherwise it would end up in the Gulf like the previous ones. Everything was considered ready for fishing.

The retro-looking stainless steel spacecraft at the top continued to fly around the world once freed from the launch vehicle. Cameras on a buoy in the Indian Ocean showed flames shooting out of the water as the booster hit exactly the target spot. It was not intended to be recovered for this demonstration.

“What a day,” Huot said. “Let’s get ready for the next one.”

The June flight ultimately failed because parts came loose. SpaceX updated the software and reworked the heat shield, improving the thermal tiles.

SpaceX has been recovering the first stage boosters of its smaller Falcon 9 rockets for nine years after putting satellites and crews into orbit from Florida or California. But they land on floating ocean platforms or on concrete slabs several miles from their launch pads – not on them.

Recycling Falcon boosters has sped up the launch rate and saved SpaceX millions. Musk intends to do the same for Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built with 33 methane fuel engines on the launch vehicle alone. NASA has ordered two spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. SpaceX intends to use Starship to send people and supplies to the moon and eventually Mars.

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