On June 1, 2026, SpaceX’s Starship V3 completed its first full test flight at the Boca Chica facility in Texas. Standing 124 meters tall with a thrust of approximately 8,240 tons, the rocket can deliver over 100 metric tons of payload into low Earth orbit. Although engine malfunctions occurred during ascent, the flight control system made automatic adjustments, allowing the rocket to complete orbital insertion, payload deployment, and reentry. It is reported that SpaceX plans to go public with a valuation of around $1.75 trillion, which, if completed, would make it the largest IPO in global history.
In 2011, German artist Michael Najjar began documenting space launches with a Hasselblad camera. He is the first artist permitted to install a camera on a launch tower at close range. In 2019, he placed a sound-activated camera just 80 meters from a Soyuz rocket at the European Spaceport in French Guiana, capturing the moment of ignition.
Najjar’s first visit to Starbase was also in 2019, when he witnessed the first launch of the Starship. In 2023, he returned to SpaceX’s Starbase in South Texas, documenting the historic moment of the world’s largest and most powerful launch system ahead of its first orbital test flight.
The "outer space" series comprises over 70 photographs and several moving-image works, and continues to grow. Starlink (2022) turns to the night sky above Chile’s Atacama Desert, showing the bright trails of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites crossing the stars, confronting the severe light pollution that human-made constellations inflict on astronomical observation and the pristine night sky. Starbase (2022) is a triptych visualizing SpaceX’s futuristic spaceport under construction in Boca Chica, South Texas. Towering Starships, Super Heavy boosters, and the launch tower rise above a vast construction site, contrasting sharply with the nighttime landscape as humanity’s path to a multi‑planetary future takes shape. Starbase II (2023) focuses on the Starship spacecraft during its construction phase. Two tiny workers replacing heat tiles on its outer wall reveal the ship’s staggering scale. Designed to carry up to 100 passengers, the Starship will soon depart from here to the Moon and Mars.
Down to earth (2024) captures the moment a Falcon 9 first-stage rocket successfully landed on a drone ship in November 2021. A long‑exposure light trail compresses launch and landing into a single image, marking how reusability has fundamentally transformed the space industry. Orbital launch mount (2024) turns its lens to SpaceX’s Starship, its fiery exhaust enveloping the angular launch mount, creating a stark tension between heat and cold, stillness and motion. CDF‑X (2025) pays homage to Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), the most important German Romantic painter, known for landscapes that convey the spiritual connection between the self and the world. The work places SpaceX’s Starship launch site within Friedrich’s horizon, extending his cosmic contemplation toward a multi‑planetary future and the exploration of Mars.
Beyond museum and institutional collections, Najjar’s work has entered the private collections of technology and financial corporations, becoming an integral part of their spaces and brand narratives. In 2025, SGP, a German audit and consulting firm, installed large-scale photographic and video works by Najjar at its new Ulm campus, addressing themes of technological innovation, space exploration, and climate change. In 2023, Najjar was invited by the Wittenstein Foundation, a non-profit focused on interdisciplinary dialogue, to participate in its symposium series "Enter The Future." Fellow panelists included Prof. Dr. Klaus Schilling, CEO of the Center for Telematics in Würzburg, and Dr. Hans Koenigsmann, former Vice President and Chief Engineer at SpaceX. In 2020, OHB, a leading European space company, commissioned Najjar to create lunar explorers, a monumental 4 x 20 meter mural installed in its main conference room, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.
