When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.One of Vantor’s WorldView Legion satellites captured this photo of SpaceX’s first Starship V3 on the pad at Starbase, Texas on May 21, 2026. | Credit: VantorA sharp-eyed satellite captured an amazing photo of SpaceX’s first Starship V3 megarocket on the pad Thursday (May 21), just before it was supposed to lift off.SpaceX aimed to launch Starship V3 — the biggest and most powerful version of the megarocket yet — for the first time ever on Thursday (May 21), from the company’s Starbase site in South Texas.AdvertisementAdvertisementAn eye in the sky was on hand to chronicle the moment — one of Vantor’s WorldView Legion satellites, which snapped a great shot of the 408-foot-tall (124.4-meter-tall) rocket from low Earth orbit.In a few minutes, @SpaceX is set to launch Starship from Boca Chica, Texas, continuing one of the most ambitious campaigns in modern spaceflight. At 4:52 p.m. CDT—barely an hour ago—Vantor captured this high-resolution image of Starship on the launchpad with one of our WorldView… pic.twitter.com/vKi6z6IWa0— @vantortech (May 21, 2026)Voir le tweet original”Wishing SpaceX lots of luck for today’s launch. At Vantor, we’re continuing to watch the future of space from space,” Vantor wrote in an X post on Thursday that shared the photo.Starship wasn’t able to get off the ground on Thursday, however; several technical issues cropped up late in the countdown, and SpaceX had to call off the attempt.SpaceX is now targeting a liftoff today (May 22), during a 90-minute window that opens at 6:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT). You can watch the action live here at Space.com.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe suborbital test flight will be the 12th overall for Starship, which launched for the first time in April 2023. It will be the first liftoff, however, for Starship V3, an upgraded variant designed to take the megarocket out of the test phase and into operational flight.Indeed, V3 is the iteration that will land astronauts on the moon during NASA Artemis missions, SpaceX representatives have said. The company still has some work to do to make that happen — for example, get the vehicle to Earth orbit, demonstrate key ca …
