SpaceX is gearing up for more-frequent launches of its Starship megarocket.
The company currently sends Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, aloft from an orbital launch mount at Starbase, its site near the South Texas border city of Brownsville. But SpaceX is working to install a second launch pad at the facility, and it recently notched a big milestone toward this goal.
“Second launch tower stacked as the newest addition to Starbase,” the company announced via X on Wednesday (Aug. 21), in a post that featured three photos of the evolving site.
More work is needed before Starships can start lifting off from the new pad, however. For example, the pad’s launch mount has not yet been installed, as the newly released photos make clear. And the tower still lacks the “chopstick” arms it will use to position Starships atop the mount and catch returning Starship first-stage boosters after liftoff.
Related: SpaceX test-fires Super Heavy Starship booster ahead of 5th flight (video)
SpaceX is developing Starship — a fully reusable, 400-foot-tall (122-meter-tall) behemoth — to help humanity settle the moon and Mars, as well as achieve a number of other bold exploration goals.
The company has launched four Starship test flights to date — two in 2023 and two so far this year. The most recent mission, which lifted off on June 6, was a success; Starship’s upper stage reached space, and both it and the booster (known as Super Heavy) splashed down intact in the ocean as planned.
SpaceX is now gearing up for Starship’s fifth test flight, which could take place as soon as the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration gives the go-ahead. The company has already performed test-fires with both Starship stages and says the vehicle is ready for liftoff.
That flight will launch from Starbase, like the four Starship missions before it. But SpaceX also plans to fly Starship from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and is working to make that happen in the relatively near future.