{"id":363471,"date":"2025-08-22T01:27:35","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T01:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/363471\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T01:27:35","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T01:27:35","slug":"spacex-moves-giant-super-heavy-rocket-to-pad-ahead-of-starship-flight-10-launch-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/363471\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX moves giant Super Heavy rocket to pad ahead of Starship Flight 10 launch (photos)"},"content":{"rendered":"

SpaceX has moved its giant Super Heavy booster to the launch pad ahead of Sunday’s (Aug. 24) planned liftoff of the Starship megarocket.<\/p>\n

The company announced the milestone Thursday (Aug. 21) in a post on X<\/a>, which featured three photos of the move.<\/p>\n

Sunday’s launch, from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas, will kick off the 10th test flight of Starship<\/a>, the fully reusable vehicle that SpaceX<\/a> is developing to send people to the moon and Mars<\/a>. Liftoff is scheduled during an hourlong window that opens at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT; 6:30 p.m. local Texas time). You’ll be able watch the action live on at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX, at launch time.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

\"closeup<\/p>\n

The Starship Flight 10 Super Heavy booster is hoisted atop the orbital launch mount at Starbase, in South Texas. (Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n

Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, consists of two elements \u2014 Super Heavy and a 171-foot-tall (52 meters) upper stage known as Starship, or simply Ship. Both are made of stainless steel and powered by SpaceX’s next-gen Raptor engine \u2014 33 for Super Heavy and 6 for Ship.<\/p>\n

One of the photos in Thursday ‘s X post is a closeup of those engines, each of which has the word “Raptor” and a pair of stylized wings emblazoned on its nozzle.<\/p>\n

\"closeup<\/p>\n

Closeup of Super Heavy’s base as it’s being hoisted onto the launch mount. (Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n

Both Super Heavy and Ship have passed engine tests ahead of Flight 10’s launch. SpaceX will next transport Ship to the pad at Starbase and stack it atop Super Heavy using the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms.<\/p>\n

Sunday’s flight will be the fourth of 2025 for Starship. On all three of this year’s launches, SpaceX has lost Ship prematurely \u2014 twice less than 10 minutes after launch, with the third failing during its reentry to Earth’s atmosphere<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!<\/p>\n

If all goes to plan on Sunday, Super Heavy will make a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico and Ship will come down in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SpaceX has moved its giant Super Heavy booster to the launch pad ahead of Sunday’s (Aug. 24) planned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-363471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115069822185361662","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}