SpaceX test fires massive Super Heavy booster for Starship for 1st time (video) - Space.com

SpaceX fired up the massive booster rocket for its new Starship spacecraft Monday night (July 19) in a short first-of-its-kind test for the company's ambitious new launch system. .

The towering stainless-steel booster, called Super Heavy, ignited three Raptor engines in a brief "static fire" test on a pad at SpaceX's Starbase facility in southern Texas, near the village of Boca Chica.

Booster 3, as this particularly Super Heavy is known, is the latest in a series of prototypes for SpaceX's Starship program, which aims to develop a fully reusable launch system for trips to the moon, Mars and beyond. .

"Full duration firing of 3 Raptors on Super Heavy Booster," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote Monday night on Twitter.

Related: SpaceX's Starship and Super Heavy rocket in pictures.

SpaceX's Super Heavy rocket is designed to be a reusable first stage booster to carry the company's massive Starship spacecraft into orbit.

The company has said it aims to launch the first orbital flight with Starship as early as this summer, pending booster tests. .

That test flight would launch a Starship prototype from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Texas to a target zone near the island of Kauai, Hawaii, while the Super Heavy booster splashes down in the Gulf of Mexico.

Eventually, SpaceX hopes to recover both its Super Heavy and Starship vehicles for later reflight as it does regularly with its Falcon 9 boosters!