Onboard views from Starship and Super Heavy V3, which are equipped with upgraded cameras capable of streaming 4K video through every phase of flight via @Starlink
What an exciting day at Wallops Island.
The Antonov AN-124 came in from the south this morning, touching down at NASA Wallops Flight Facility at around 10:10 AM. No photo does that aircraft justice — it has to be seen in person to truly appreciate the scale.
It taxied to the end of the runway and was unloaded incredibly fast. By the time we packed up and went to grab lunch down the road, it was already back in the air. Total ground time: roughly two and a half hours. Rocket Lab moved fast today.
Right after lunch we swung by the AIC — Rocket Lab's Assembly and Integration Complex — and sure enough, they were already loading the PAF (Payload Attach Fitting / Payload Adapter) into the gray building at the Neutron complex.
The other containers offloaded from the AN-124 remain a mystery — we never did see where those went.
Watching to see if Rocket Lab issues any media briefings soon. Also put together a short video from about 250 still photos taken during the landing this morning — excuse a little jitter, but it captures just how quickly things moved today.
Landing
4K Video here: https://t.co/9yc6ugO2zb
Rollout
4K Video here: https://t.co/UwfqHxnP5S
@NASASpaceflight
Only one chance in this lifetime…
Like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos, I couldn’t resist a cell phone video of Earthset. You can hear the shutter on the Nikon as @Astro_Christina is hammering away on 3-shot brackets and capturing those exceptional Earthset photos through the 400mm lens. @AstroVicGlover was in window 3 watching with @Astro_Jeremy next to him.
I could barely see the Moon through the docking hatch window but the iPhone was the perfect size to catch the view…this is uncropped, uncut with 8x zoom which is quite comparable to the view of the human eye. Enjoy.