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by SpaceX The first real Super Heavy rocket is back on the launch pad.
The technicians lifted the engine 29 Very heavy vehicle known as Booster 4 on the orbital launch medium at SpaceX’s South Texas space base site on Wednesday (Sept. 8), photos from area observers show.
The move came just over a month after the 70-meter-tall Booster 4 was first hoisted on the skate, then topped with a prototype spacecraft called SN20 (short for “Serial No. 20”) in the very first stack of a full-size Starship vehicle. The duo, however, were quickly unstacked, so that additional work could be done on both elements.
Related: SpaceX’s Super Heavy spaceship and rocket in pictures
Starship is the transportation system that SpaceX is developing to transport people and goods to the moon, Mars, and other deep space destinations. The Super Heavy and the 165-foot-tall (50m) top tier – which is, somewhat confusingly, also known as the Starship – are designed to be fully and quickly reusable.
SpaceX has performed a number of 10-kilometer-high test flights with prototype spacecraft, including a successful end-to-end jaunt last May. by vehicle SN15. No Super Heavy has taken off yet, and SpaceX is preparing Booster 4 to be the first.
Booster 4 and SN20 will perform the Starship program’s very first orbital test flight, if all goes as planned. Booster 4 will land in the Gulf of Mexico shortly after takeoff, and SN20 will orbit, circling our planet once before landing in the Pacific Ocean near the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
Wednesday’s Booster 4 decision could presage a series of tests intended to pave the way for this test flight. But it is not known when Booster 4 and SN20 will be able to take off, regardless of the course of the various pre-launch tests. The United States Federal Aviation Administration is conducting a environmental assessment of Starship launch operations, and the end date of this exam is unknown.
Mike Wall is the author of “The low“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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