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Why didn’t SpaceX attempt to catch the rocket this time?published at 23:14 Greenwich Mean Time

23:14 GMT

Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent

There are
so many things that have to be exactly right to successfully catch a rocket
booster the size of a 20-story building as it slows down from supersonic speed
at the launch tower.

In the previous successful attempt, flight engineers were
just one second from aborting.

For the catch to be attempted, flight
engineers have to give a verbal “Go” for both the tower and the booster.

Today, there
was a “Go” for the tower. So initial indications are that there may have been an
issue with the booster section, and the
flight team followed its procedures and sent it for a safe splashdown in the
Gulf of Mexico.

Although the failure to reproduce the catch will be
disappointing, SpaceX has made rapid progress in developing Starship since its
very first test flight, which was only 19 months ago.

The firm’s approach is to
test fast, fail fast and learn fast in its effort to build a fully reusable
spacecraft to send astronauts to the Moon and then on to Mars.