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IrelandSuper Heavy's first catch puts Mechazilla's precision on display
Sky News's fast-starting upload shows the 2024 booster catch, a different milestone from its separate coverage of Starship's upper-stage return.
Sky News
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 552,268 views a day, 21 times a normal first day on this channel (26,058).
SpaceX achieves historic 'catch' of Starship
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Video summary
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- 0:29Super Heavy descends vertically through low cloud towards the launch tower.
- 0:43Mechazilla's mechanical arms catch the booster as it comes to a stop.
- 1:14Kate Arkless Gray recalls seeing Falcon Heavy boosters land in person.
- 2:04Broadcast feeds show SpaceX flight controllers and employees celebrating.
- 2:51Gray explains why damage to the launch tower could have set operations back months.
Low cloud parts around the descending booster, its engines fire beside the tower, and the giant mechanical arms take its weight. Within the opening minute of Sky News's upload, Super Heavy is hanging upright above the launch site.
The footage shows Starship Flight 5, the October 2024 test that achieved the first tower catch of a returning Super Heavy booster. It is an earlier milestone, distinct from the upper-stage catch featured in another Sky News upload published alongside it.
That distinction matters: Super Heavy is the lower stage that helps launch Starship, not the spacecraft that continues towards orbit. Here, the spectacle is its precise return to the tower nicknamed Mechazilla, whose enormous arms are often called "chopsticks".
The upload drew roughly 219,000 views in six hours, already far beyond the channel's usual full-day audience for a regular video.
Guest commentator Kate Arkless Gray brings a useful counterweight to the celebrations. The structure catching the booster is also essential launch infrastructure. "That is their launch and landing tower, so you really have to get it right, otherwise you destroy a vital piece of the infrastructure," she says.
As mission control and employees celebrate, Gray recalls watching Falcon Heavy boosters land in person. What stays with her is the apparent mismatch between the speed of the descent and the delicacy of the finish: "The speed that they are coming down at, you just think there's no way this could work."
The fifth test flight of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, flown on October 13, 2024. It marked the first launch-tower catch of a returning Super Heavy booster.
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What viewers say
This is Thunderbirds stuff
@deemdoubleuSee it on YouTubeBig up to all the engineers who made this possible
@yungpeen5201See it on YouTubeEngineering masterpiece
@ПетрВолынскийSee it on YouTube
2 more comments
Amazing achievement congratulations to the entire SpaceX team 🎉
@JO-ui9flSee it on YouTubeThat was seriously slick and impressive
@ManChickinSee it on YouTube
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- Channel
- Sky News
- Subscribers
- 9,400,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 20,728,144
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,466,777 (on a normal day: 2,901,912)
- Video published
- November 14, 2026
- Video views so far
- 219,154 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 552,268
The numbers
The booster-catch upload passed Sky News's usual full-day audience within its opening six hours. Its projected first-day total is an estimate, not a completed day's views.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which part of the Starship launch vehicle is caught in this Flight 5 footage?
Flight 5 achieved the first launch-tower catch of a returning Super Heavy booster.