<\/p>\n An eye in the sky was on hand to chronicle the moment \u2014 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n 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\u2014barely an hour ago\u2014Vantor captured this high-resolution image of Starship on the launchpad with one of our WorldView\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/vKi6z6IWa0May 21, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n “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<\/a> that shared the photo.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n SpaceX is now targeting a liftoff today<\/a> (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.<\/p>\n The 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<\/a>, an upgraded variant designed to take the megarocket out of the test phase and into operational flight.<\/p>\n Indeed, V3 is the iteration that will land astronauts on the moon during NASA Artemis<\/a> missions, SpaceX representatives have said. The company still has some work to do to make that happen \u2014 for example, get the vehicle to Earth orbit, demonstrate key capabilities like in-space refueling and install a life-support system.<\/p>\n Vantor (previously known as Maxar Intelligence) currently operates six WorldView Legion satellites<\/a>. The Earth-observing spacecraft orbit our planet at an altitude of about 322 miles (518 kilometers) and can resolve features on the ground as small 11.8 inches (30 centimeters) \u2014 or about 0.24% the height of Starship V3.<\/p>\n![\"Space\"](\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/media\/img\/spc-logo-w.svg\"){kind=logo}
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