Sparks fly day and night as SpaceX prepares to launch Starship rocket

For the past two weeks, workers with soldering guns and torches have been climbing onto SpaceX’s Starship launch pad in South Texas almost every day to make last-minute upgrades before the next test flight of the world’s largest rocket.

Live streaming of the launch site was provided by Lab Padre and NASA Space Flight Recent images show sparks shooting from two mechanical arms extending from the side of the Starship launch tower at SpaceX’s Starbase launch site on the Gulf Coast east of Brownsville, Texas. Here are several scenes of welding activity using So from LabPadrewhich runs a YouTube page with multiple live views of Starbase.

If SpaceX succeeds in its goal for the next Starship flight, those arms will come together to capture the first-stage booster, called Super Heavy, as it descends to Earth and slows down until it hovers above the launch pad.

This method of recovering rockets is markedly different from the method SpaceX uses to land its smaller Falcon 9 booster, which has landing legs for landing on offshore platforms in the ocean or on concrete sites on the beach. According to SpaceX, holding the rocket with large metal arms — sometimes called “Michael arms” or “chopsticks” — would reduce the booster’s reuse time and simplify its design.

SpaceX has launched the roughly 400-foot-tall (121-meter-tall) Starship rocket four times, most recently in June, when the roughly 233-foot-tall (71-meter-tall) Super Heavy booster landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Starbase.

On the same flight in June, the Starship upper stage flew halfway around the world and re-entered the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. The ship survived the re-entry and landed in the open ocean northwest of Australia. The flight was the first time any part of a Starship rocket had returned to Earth intact, but SpaceX did not recover the booster or the vehicle.

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Lessons learned from the June test flight prompted SpaceX to replace thousands of heat shield panels on Starship in preparation for the next mission. While the spacecraft survived reentry in June, onboard camera footage showed several panels torn off the vehicle. Last month, SpaceX tested engines on the booster and the vehicle slated for the next launch.

On August 8SpaceX said its Starship and Super Heavy rockets are “ready to fly, pending regulatory approval” from the Federal Aviation Administration. An FAA spokesman said the agency is evaluating SpaceX’s proposed flight profile for the next Starship test flight, when SpaceX wants to try to latch the booster to the pad. It would be the first time SpaceX has tried to land the stainless steel Super Heavy, which is about the length and width of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet, back on Earth.

While the rocket appears ready to launch, SpaceX officials clearly believe there is more work to be done on the launch pad. Closer shots reveal welders installing structural supports, or doublers, for certain parts of the grab arms. Elsewhere on the arms, workers are seen removing and adding other, unidentified pieces of hardware. SpaceX hasn’t specified exactly what kind of work crews are doing on the Starship launch pad in Texas, but the focus is on bolstering the hardware needed to grab the Super Heavy booster.

All this work is being done during the hottest time of year in South Texas. Most days this month, afternoon temperatures have been in the mid- to upper-90s, with sticky humidity. Much of the work on the booms has been done at night, when temperatures can drop into the low 80s.

It’s not clear how long it will take for the FAA to approve SpaceX’s launch and recovery license for the next test flight or when SpaceX will complete upgrades to the launch pad. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk suggested earlier this month that the flight could take off by the end of August, but the state of the launch pad and remaining testing suggest the launch is still at least two weeks away.

Once workers have finished upgrading the pad and cleared scaffolding and cranes from the area, SpaceX will likely stack and fuel the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage during a full countdown rehearsal, as it has done before every previous Starship launch.

Musk has indicated several times that the company will attempt to catch the Super Heavy booster on the next flight, which will also accelerate the Starship upper stage to near-orbital speed for another reentry demonstration over the Indian Ocean. Last month, SpaceX released a teaser video of the booster being caught on Starship’s next flight, showing the rocket returning to Starbase with its Raptor engines.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has installed a second Starship launch tower next to its existing launch pad in Texas. The company still has a lot of work to do to get the second launch pad ready to support a Starship flight, but SpaceX could be ready to go sometime next year. SpaceX also plans to build two Starship launch pads at Cape Canaveral, Florida. All of these sites will allow SpaceX to launch Starships more frequently. The company is also finishing up a sprawling factory near its Starship factory in South Texas, just a few miles from the launch pads there.