After 22 hours in space, Starship is caught by the tower's arms in a first-ever ship catch

SpaceX's Starship made a triumphant return to Earth on Saturday — caught in midair by the giant mechanical arms of the launch tower. The spacecraft came back to where its journey began, 22 hours after lifting off from Starbase in Texas on Friday.

It was the first-ever capture of a Starship flying back from space. It was the grand finale that Elon Musk and his team had hoped for.

But the dream of catching both parts did not come true. Shortly after Friday's liftoff, the first-stage booster exploded. Its wreckage lies in the Gulf of Mexico, cordoned off by buoys, while the stainless steel, bullet-shaped spacecraft lowered itself upright at the launch pad.

The dramatic catch helped blot out the disappointment of the booster's miss. SpaceX commentator Dan Huot shouted, "Can you believe it?"

SpaceX officials said Saturday's catch demonstrates the full reusability of Starship, which is intended for travel to the moon and Mars. Although Friday's booster recovery failed, the company had already made three previous booster catches.

NASA welcomed Saturday's news. The space agency is paying billions of dollars for Starship to land Artemis astronauts on the moon later this decade and to help build a permanent lunar base. Musk's ambitions are even grander: he wants to launch a fleet of Starships to build a city on Mars.

The world's largest and most powerful rocket is 407 feet (124 metres) tall. It blasted off late Friday afternoon from SpaceX's Starbase near the US-Mexican border. Separating neatly from its booster, the upper-stage spacecraft soared into orbit and released 26 advanced Starlink satellites.

The spacecraft then circled the world 165 miles (265 kilometres) up, streaming live views of itself and Earth via Starlink. It completed 14 laps around Earth, far more than the previous mission's one to two laps.

It was SpaceX's 15th flight of a full-scale Starship since 2023, and only its second trip to orbit. SpaceX reported that everything on the spacecraft, including its vital heat shield, appeared to work well.

As for the booster, SpaceX's Kate Tice said its engines stopped firing too soon on the way back down. The booster's guidance system sensed it was not in the right position and automatically initiated the watery detour and self-destruction. Engineers are still investigating the cause.

SpaceX expects to begin launching Starships from Florida's Kennedy Space Center within the next few months. That will be the starting point for NASA's next Artemis mission, in which the spacecraft will skip the moon and remain in orbit around Earth for lunar lander practice.

Artemis III's four astronauts will attempt to dock their capsule with not only Starship but Blue Origin's Blue Moon. The two companies will take turns delivering crews to the lunar surface. NASA is targeting as soon as 2028 for Artemis IV, humanity's first moon landing since the Apollo era more than half a century ago.