See photos from fueling test of SpaceX's 1st orbital Starship - Space.com

SpaceX fueled up a fully stacked Starship vehicle for the first time ever on Monday (Jan. 23), and dramatic photos preserve the process for posterity.

The 395-foot-tall (120 meters) Starship is an icy white in the new photos, which SpaceX released via Twitter(opens in new tab) on Tuesday (Jan. 24).

(Image credit: SpaceX via Twitter)During wet dress rehearsals, mission teams practice many of the procedures they will perform on launch day.

But this Starship vehicle, which consists of a first-stage prototype called Booster 7 and an upper-stage spacecraft known as Ship 24, must pass a few more tests before embarking on that milestone flight, as SpaceX explained.

For instance, the agency selected the vehicle to be the first crewed lander for its Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent, sustainable presence on and around the moon by the end of the 2020s.

Mike Wall is the author of " Out There(opens in new tab)" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life.