WATCH: SpaceX Successfully Catches Second Super Heavy Booster

Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully caught its Super Heavy Booster for a second time after the launch of its Starship megarocket — the largest rocket in the world — on Thursday.

The launch for Starship’s 7th test flight at its Starbase in south Texas took place in clear conditions. Just seven-and-a-half minutes after launching Starship into orbit, the Heavy Booster, which is 232 feet tall, returned to the launch pad and was caught by two massive metal arms that Musk calls “chopsticks.” The feat marks the second time SpaceX has caught its rocket with the chopsticks after making history with the new engineering achievement in October.

“We caught the rocket!!” Musk posted on X.

We caught the rocket!! ????
pic.twitter.com/gVv34W9l2n pic.twitter.com/o0vA3XXi8L

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 16, 2025

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Catching the rocket is important for the space company as it hopes to eventually catch the Starship spacecraft itself, CNN reported, a development that could save SpaceX money and time as it pushes forward to achieve Musk’s goal of colonizing Mars.

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Shortly after Starship launched into orbit, SpaceX lost communication with the spacecraft, and it was lost.

“We can confirm that we did lose the ship,” said SpaceX engineer Kate Tice, according to CNN.

Starship, which was on a test flight, was supposed to go around Earth and splash into the Indian Ocean.

“We obviously need to go through all the data. It’s going to take some time. In the next hours, days — we’re going to figure out exactly what happened, come back, fly the next one, get farther,” Communications Manager Dan Huot said. “Reminder, it’s a test of an experimental vehicle.”

The launch was initially scheduled for Monday, but was moved back to Wednesday and then moved again to Thursday over inclement weather.