SpaceX completed an amazing first on Sunday, plucking the lower half of its huge Starship launch system out of midair, as euphoric SpaceX employees watched from the control center. But why does SpaceX have to catch it anyway?

The success is a giant leap toward the company's goal to take humans and cargo all the way to Mars on the world's biggest and most powerful launch vehicle

SpaceX made big strides on its path to creating a rocket capable of flying to the moon and Mars, completing a journey to space with its Starship that included catching the vehicle’s booster back at the launchpad using giant mechanical arms.

The risky maneuver is a step toward SpaceX’s goal of full reusability for Starship, which is the world’s most powerful rocket, and is key to NASA’s plans to return to the moon.

The company achieved a major milestone during the fifth test flight of the vehicle, which could carry people to the moon and Mars, landing the rocket’s booster stage at a Texas launch site.

What can your company learn from SpaceX’s remarkable engineering success? Think like a startup and move fast, get things wrong, try again, while ignoring the critics.

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,

Elon Musk's SpaceX has succeeded in catching the Super Heavy booster as it returned to the launchpad in Texas.