Sundar Pichai congratulated Elon Musk as SpaceX pulled off the boldest test flight yet of its enormous Starship rocket on Sunday. In an incredible feat, Elon Musk-owned SpaceX successfully intercepted the returning booster back of its Starship rocket by using the mechanical arms in its launch pad.
Footage of the Starship rocket booster being caught was shared by Elon Musk on his social media platform X.
“The tower has caught the rocket,” wrote Musk - referring to the first-stage booster flew back to the launch pad where it had blasted off seven minutes earlier.
The launch tower's monstrous metal arms, dubbed chopsticks, caught the descending 232-foot (71-meter) stainless steel booster and gripped it tightly, dangling it well above the ground.
This marks the first time the company has recovered the rocket booster right on its launch pad rather than landing it on floating ocean platforms. The engineering feat drew compliments from millions of people - including Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Take a look at Sundar Pichai's response to Elon Musk's video:
“Huge congrats, have to admit, rewatched the video many times over, incredible to see!” wrote Google CEO Sundar Pichai on X.
{{/usCountry}}“Huge congrats, have to admit, rewatched the video many times over, incredible to see!” wrote Google CEO Sundar Pichai on X.
{{/usCountry}}Pichai was not alone in offering congratulations to Musk - industrialist Anand Mahindra was also full of praise.
The industrialist wrote a message to the SpaceX CEO, saying: “This Sunday, I’m happy to be a couch potato if it means that I get to watch history being made. This experiment may just be the critical moment when space travel was democratised and made routine.”
Standing nearly 400 feet (121 meters) tall, the Starship launched from southern Texas at sunrise and soared over the Gulf of Mexico. Like its predecessors, it followed a similar arc, though previous flights had ended in destruction shortly after liftoff or upon sea impact.
This maneuver marks a significant advancement in SpaceX’s strategy of testing its rockets as it seeks to develop a reusable vehicle for lunar and Mars missions.
(With inputs from AP)