SpaceX has posted dramatic close-up images of the Starship’s Super Heavy booster captured during Sunday’s historic test flight.
SpaceX has shared some dramatic close-up pictures of the 70-meter-tall Super Heavy booster at the start and finish of its historic test flight on Sunday in which the rocket was brought safely back to Earth for the first time.
The photos show the Super Heavy’s Raptor engines lit up during the launch at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, as the vehicle launched on its fifth test flight, and also as it came in to land — secured by giant mechanical arms on the launchpad — about seven minutes after launch.
SpaceX described the fifth test flight of the Starship — comprising the first-stage Super Heavy booster and the upper-stage Starship spacecraft — as its “most ambitious” to date “as we work to demonstrate techniques fundamental to Starship and Super Heavy’s fully and rapidly reusable design.”
Here’s a video of the remarkable moment when mechanical arms secured the enormous booster as it returned to Earth:
In a post on its website, SpaceX said: “Following a successful liftoff, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and coast, the Super Heavy booster performed its landing burn and was caught by the chopstick arms of the launch and catch tower at Starbase.
