Mammoth

But to reuse, you have to recover, and SpaceX is proving that it will be able to do just that with Starship. The ultimate goal is to fly Super Heavy and the Starship upper stage back to Starbase, SpaceX’s private Starship launch and development site in southeast Texas, where they’d make vertical landings on solid ground. Starship lifted off from Starbase at 8:50 AM CT, the fourth launch in the rocket test campaign. A little over an hour after launch, Starship followed suit, surviving the extreme heat from traveling through the Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic speeds and splashing down in the Indian Ocean. During that test, SpaceX also tested capabilities that will be key for delivering payload to space, including opening and closing the payload door.