SpaceX launched its mighty Starship rocket for the eighth time last week. The mission was a bit of mixed bag, with the team successfully catching the first-stage Super Heavy booster on its return to the launchpad, but losing the Starship spacecraft in a midair explosion minutes after stage separation. The Elon Musk-led spaceflight company is now looking into what went wrong.
After each Starship test, SpaceX usually releases video clips showing the mission’s key moments. On Sunday, it shared some extraordinary footage (below) captured from below the booster as it launched from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The slowed-down video shows the rocket’s 33 Raptor engines firing up as the enormous 120-meter-tall vehicle leaves the launchpad.
View under the launch mount as Super Heavy's 33 Raptor engines ignite on Starship's eighth flight test pic.twitter.com/WRCazkhyXs
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 9, 2025
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With the rocket pumping out a colossal 17 million pounds of thrust, it’s hard to fathom how the camera that captured the footage managed to stay intact. But stay intact it did.
SpaceX hasn’t revealed how it achieved the feat, but in the comments below the footage, someone asked X’s AI assistant, Grok, how the the footage was captured from such a seemingly vulnerable spot. The chatbot responded: “High-speed cameras under the launch mount capture the ignition of Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines. They’re mounted on reinforced structures, shielded from heat and debris, and use advanced telemetry to transmit footage in real-time. SpaceX has perfected this tech for jaw-dropping views like Starship’s eighth flight test.”
Capturing a close-up of the world’s most powerful rocket from this angle is all the more remarkable when you consider how the launchpad disintegrated when it was blasted by the Starship’s rocket engines on its maiden launch in April 2023.
For the second flight test, SpaceX engineers designed a more robust and secure launchpad able to handle the incredible force generated by the Raptor engines as the Starship lifted off.
Once testing of the rocket is complete, NASA and SpaceX will use the Starship rocket to carry crew and cargo to the lunar surface, and possibly to Mars, too.