SpaceX Mechazilla Chopstick Catch
Most rockets that come back from space either parachute into the ocean or land on legs. SpaceX does something stranger: it catches its giant booster out of the air with two huge mechanical arms on the launch tower.
Quick facts
- What it catches: the Super Heavy booster, the first stage (the bottom, most powerful section) of SpaceX’s Starship rocket.
- The tower (“Mechazilla”): the launch tower at SpaceX’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, standing roughly 146 meters (about 480 feet) tall.
- The “chopsticks”: two large steel arms, each about 36 meters long, that open and close to grab the booster.
- The booster: about 71 meters (233 feet) tall, 9 meters (about 30 feet) wide, with 33 Raptor engines producing roughly 76 meganewtons (about 17 million pounds) of thrust at liftoff — the most powerful rocket booster ever flown.
- First catch: Starship Flight 5, October 13, 2024, about 7 minutes after liftoff — successful on the first attempt.
What it is and how it works
The “Mechazilla Chopstick Catch” is SpaceX’s method of recovering the Super Heavy booster by grabbing it in mid-air with two giant mechanical arms — nicknamed “chopsticks” — mounted on the launch tower, instead of landing it on legs. The nickname “Mechazilla” is a play on Godzilla and Mechagodzilla, because the arms also lift and stack the rocket before flight.
After the upper stage separates and continues toward space, the booster flips around and fires a boostback burn (a rocket burn that reverses its direction) to head back toward the launch site. Coasting down through the atmosphere, it steers with grid fins — flat, waffle-shaped panels that work like an airplane’s control surfaces — guided by GPS, radar, and onboard sensors.
Near the tower, the booster relights its inner Raptor engines for a landing burn to slow down, then makes a sideways “slide” maneuver to line up precisely with the two open arms. It throttles down to a near-hover. This is possible because those inner engines can produce less thrust than the empty booster weighs, so the rocket can hang almost motionless — like a helicopter holding steady. Of the 33 engines, only the inner 13 (the center plus a middle ring) can relight and swivel; in the final seconds about 3 center engines do the hovering. The outer 20 engines are fixed and stay off.
Once the booster is in position, the arms close around it. Small load-bearing pins built into the upper part of the rocket’s body settle onto catch rails on the arms, handing the vehicle’s full weight to the tower. The engines then shut down.
Why it matters
Catching the booster — rather than landing it on legs, as SpaceX’s smaller Falcon 9 rocket does — removes the weight and complexity of landing legs from the rocket and returns it straight to the launch mount. In principle, crews can refuel and relaunch the same booster with very little turnaround time. That fast, leg-free reusability is central to SpaceX’s plan for a high flight rate and low cost, which in turn supports Starship’s Moon and Mars ambitions, including NASA’s Artemis program. As the booster settled into the arms, a SpaceX engineer on the live broadcast called it “a day for the engineering history books” — the first time a returning orbital-class rocket booster had ever been caught by its launch tower.
There is a real trade-off. Because the catch happens right at the launch site, a failure could destroy the tower, the launch mount, and the nearby fuel tanks. For that reason, thousands of vehicle and pad health checks must pass, and the attempt can be called off even in the final seconds.
Notable examples
- Flight 5 (October 13, 2024): the first-ever successful chopstick catch, achieved on the first try.
- Flight 6 (November 19, 2024): the catch was waved off in the final moments after a loss of communications at the launch tower; the booster diverted to a soft splashdown in the Gulf, showing the abort logic that protects the tower.
- Flights 7 (January 2025) and 8 (March 2025): both boosters were caught successfully, showing the technique can repeat.
The system also relies on the Raptor engine (which burns methane and oxygen), whose gimbaling inner units relight and throttle the booster into its hover. Beyond Starbase, SpaceX is building a second chopstick-equipped tower at Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. The eventual goal is to catch the Starship upper stage with chopsticks too, not just the booster.
