Watch: SpaceX 'catches' Starship booster after flight

SpaceX successfully "caught" the first-stage booster of its Starship megarocket using giant metal arms as it returned to the launch pad after a test flight, a first in the company's quest to build reusable a moon and Mars vehicle.

The rocket's Super Heavy first stage booster lifted off at 7.25am (1.25pm Irish time) from SpaceX's launch facilities in Boca Chica, Texas, sending the Starship second stage rocket toward space before separating at an altitude of roughly 70km to begin its return to land.

The Super Heavy booster re-lit three of its 33 Raptor engines to slow its speedy descent back to SpaceX's launch site, as it targeted the launch tower it had blasted off from.

With its engines roaring, the 71 metre-tall booster fell into two metal arms fitted to the tower, hooking itself in place by its four forward grid fins it used to steer itself through the air.

"The tower has caught the rocket!!" SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X afterwards.

The novel catch-landing method is the latest advance in SpaceX's test-to-failure development campaign for a fully reusable rocket designed to loft more cargo into orbit, ferry humans to the moon for NASA and eventually reach Mars - the ultimate destination envisioned by Mr Musk.

The US Federal Aviation Administration approved SpaceX's launch license for the Starship test, following weeks of tension between the company and its regulator over the pace of launch approvals and fines related to SpaceX's workhorse rocket, the Falcon 9.

Starship, first unveiled by Mr Musk in 2017, has exploded several times in various stages of testing on past flights, but successfully completed a full flight in June for the first time.

The two-stage rocket's Super Heavy booster lifted off from Texas sending the second stage Starship on a near-orbital path bound for the Indian Ocean some 90 minutes later, acing a fiery hypersonic reentry.

Irish scientist says SpaceX launch 'moment we will never forget'

An Irish scientist has hailed SpaceX's fifth giant Starship rocket launch as "amazing" and a "real moment that we will probably never forget" as it succeeded in its very first attempt to catch a huge booster launch rocket, as it returned back to earth in Texas today.

Giant robotic arms were used in a chopstick manoevre in what is being hailed as an engineering first.

Dr Niamh Shaw, scientist and space expert said the amazing thing about today was that this is "an enormous rocket".

"Its on a whole other level and they're doing it because they want to have a faster turnaround. They want to have more usability.

"Being able to catch it in the launch pad, they don't have to go out and colleact it, which they normally do on a barge on the ocean, and then pull the legs up and then bring it back and rest it."

She said today's success means the booster will instead be ready to go again, making reusable space vehicles a step closer for the company.

"None of us expected it to actually happen today because you're trying to do something that's never been done before," she said.

"They actually succeeded in the first attempt. Watching it come down and then with the chopsticks or the mechazilla, as it's called... it was a real moment that we'll probably never forget."

She believes that CEO Elon Musk's aspirations for the SpaceX flights to lead to what he calls multiplanetary life in the future are a "big sell."

However, she believes the company will continue to work at the forefront of space exploration, providing "really good business for space."

She says tomorrow there will be another first with a science experiment being brought to Jupiter on a NASA mission.

"SpaceX are a business and they're making a lot of money," she said, adding that if you were a betting person, SpaceX was likely to be involved in bringing scientific experiments to Mars.

"Let's get to the moon first and let's make sure that humans get there safely before we start talking about pie in the sky stuff."