After SpaceX made history yesterday and successfully caught the world’s largest rocket mid air for the first time, fresh images from the company and remarks from Elon Musk highlight the stress that the rocket experienced during its historic return to the launch tower. Starship is the only rocket in the world and in history designed to be caught by the launch tower, and SpaceX’s images show its outer ring engine nozzles glowing red hot as the rocket made its way back to the launch site. Musk’s latest comments about the rocket made after inspections provide details, as they share that heating deformed some of the engine nozzles during return.
Since the Starship Super Heavy booster for Flight 5 was the first one to return to the pad, it was also the first that enabled SpaceX and onlookers to capture detailed views of its engines close to a splashdown. The rocket’s landing profile sees it test all systems before approaching the tower, while the engines part of the center core also fire up to reduce its speed for a landing.
Footage from SpaceX and subsequent images show that as the center engines were busy reducing the rocket’s speed, the outer engine nozzles were glowing red hot because of the friction with the air during the landing. This glow continued up to the point where Starship Super Heavy positioned itself between the tower’s catch arms for its subsequent catch and engine shut down.
Soon after Flight 5, Musk had taken to X to share that “outer engine nozzles are a little warped from high heating & strong aero forces” and maintained that the damage was “easily fixable.” These fixes are essential for Starship’s reusability as catching the booster is only one part of SpaceX’s plans to ensure that the rocket succeeds the Falcon 9 as the next workhorse launch vehicle.
After heading to the launch tower at night local time in Texas, Musk shared that the Super Heavy booster looked great after the tower arms placed it on the launch mount. He added that a “few outer engine nozzles are warped from heating & some other minor issues, but these are easily addressed.”