ISS Camera Captures the Moment Starship Rocket Launches From Texas

The view from space as the enormous Starship rocket (circled) launches from Texas.

A camera attached to the International Space Station (ISS) captured the view from orbit as SpaceX launched its massive Starship rocket on Tuesday.

The video was captured by the ISS’s SpaceTV-1 external camera which is operated by the Sen Corporation, according to Mashable.

Congratulations @SpaceX on the incredible sixth test flight of Starship. We captured the launch plume live from our cameras on the Space Station 🚀 pic.twitter.com/7rIpu1rwb3

— sen (@sen) November 20, 2024

The video, taken on November 19, captures SpaceX’s nearly 400-foot-tall Starship vehicle launching into space. It was Starship’s sixth test flight watched on the ground in Texas by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump.

About eight seconds into the video, a plume of white smoke emerges from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. The body of water seen close by is the Gulf of Mexico.

Such footage of a rocket launch from space is rare, prompting Getty Images to Tweet: “This is believed to be the first time ever a rocket launch has been filmed in real time from space.”

SpaceX #Starship launch plume for its sixth test flight is filmed on November 19, 2024 from Space. This is believed to be the first time ever a rocket launch has been filmed in real-time from space. @SpaceX #Starship6#GettyNewsVideo 🎥@sen 👉https://t.co/326hPqUDFw pic.twitter.com/EMbhJelgGV

— Getty Images News (@GettyImagesNews) November 20, 2024

The video is a timelapse made from footage that was live streamed from the 4K SpaceTV-1 camera, an instrument that was only recently installed on the ISS.

The Starship test was largely a success but didn’t achieve its objective of being caught with giant mechanical arms. Instead, it splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico while the empty spacecraft launched atop Stoarship soared on; completing a near loop of the planet before splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

The aim of Starship is to carry people and cargo to the Moon and Mars while being reusable. That recycling will drive down the costs of interplanetary travel.

NASA is paying SpaceX more than $4 billion to land astronauts on the Moon via Starship on back-to-back missions later this decade. Musk envisions launching a fleet of Starships to build a city on Mars someday.