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In a short video released Thursday, presumably to celebrate America’s Fourth of July holiday with the biggest rocket red glow of all, SpaceX provided new footage from the latest test of its Starship launch vehicle.

That test, the fourth of the experimental rocket that NASA relies on to land its astronauts on the moon and that could one day send humans to Mars, took place on June 6. During the flight, the rocket’s first stage performed well during ascent and, after separating from the upper stage, made a controlled re-entry into the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship’s upper stage appeared to make a nominal flight through space before making a controlled, albeit fiery, landing in the Indian Ocean.

The new video focuses mostly on the “Super Heavy” booster stage and its entry into the Persian Gulf. There’s new footage from a camera on top of the 71m first step, as well as a close-up buoy at water level. The buoy video, in particular, shows the first stage making an upright landing in the ocean.

Perhaps most intriguingly, at the end of the video, SpaceX teases an image of the Starship’s large launch tower in South Texas at the Starbase facility. Prominent are the two “chopsticks”, large arms designed to grip the first stage booster as it slowly descends back to its launch pad.

Then, in simulated footage, the video shows the first stage of the Starship descending back to the launch tower with the title “Flight 5”. And then it fades.

To land or not to land?

This supports the idea that SpaceX is working to try to capture a Starship booster on its next flight test, which is likely to happen later this summer. No doubt, the company still has both technical and regulatory work to do before that happens.

In the days immediately following the fourth flight, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the company’s goal was to attempt such a landing on the next launch. However, during a conversation last week with local residents in South Texas, Starbase General Manager Cathy Lueders said that experience may not happen on Flight 5.

However, new video released Thursday shows that a capture attempt is still on the table as a possibility and perhaps even a possibility. Such a landing would be both visually stunning and a calculated risk to SpaceX’s launch tower infrastructure, as the booster would likely land with several reserve tons of methane and liquid oxygen in its tanks.

If SpaceX decides to go ahead with the experiment, it still needs to obtain a launch and re-entry license from the Federal Aviation Administration, which is tasked with ensuring the safety of people and property on Earth. It seems likely that the next test flight will not take place until August.

Meanwhile, launch site operations in South Texas may be limited for several days as Hurricane Beryl enters the Gulf of Mexico later Friday and then heads toward the Texas coast early next week. Beryl’s center is expected to pass near or north of the launch site late Sunday or Monday evening, bringing winds and waves.

However, since Beryl is not expected to be a major hurricane in terms of wind speed, these impacts should not prove catastrophic for SpaceX’s facilities. Heavy rainfall and inland flooding in the low-lying Starbase area is also possible Monday and Tuesday before the storm moves away.