Following Tuesday’s release of footage showing the dramatic descent of the Starship’s upper-stage spacecraft, which ended with a landing on water, SpaceX has now released a video of what it calls the “Super Heavy hover.”
The clip shows the Starship’s 71-meter-tall first stage hovering above waters off the coast of southern Texas just before it, too, made a controlled landing just minutes after deploying the Ship spacecraft on a suborbital trajectory.
As you can see, the booster appears to hold its position in the air for several seconds before making its final short descent.
Some of those commenting on the footage asked SpaceX why it didn’t keep the video running to include the explosion that occurred when the Super Heavy hit the water. So, here’s footage of the same descent, captured by NASASpaceflight.
The deliberate hover will provide SpaceX engineers with more data as they work on refining and improving the design of the 123-meter-tall Starship rocket.
When fully operational, the Super Heavy will land not on water but back at SpaceX’s Starbase launch site near Boca Chica, Texas, in a maneuver that involves giant mechanical arms on the launch tower securing the booster just above the ground.
SpaceX has already achieved the spectacular feat, which you can watch here. For recent flights, however, it has landed the booster over water to test a more complex return procedure that risks damaging the facilities at its Starbase site should it go wrong.
Bringing back the booster to the launch site will allow SpaceX to quickly refurbish and relaunch the rocket for multiple missions. The upper-stage Ship is also designed to perform a similar kind of landing, with SpaceX aiming to attempt it for the first time next year.
The Ship also has to be able to land and launch on other celestial bodies, with a modified version of the vehicle set to be used for the Artemis III mission that will return astronauts to the moon no earlier than 2027.
Work on the Starship’s development is ramping up, but there is still much work to do before the rocket is ready for prime time.
