SpaceX's latest Starship prototype has been stacked in preparation for an ambitious test flight that will take the vehicle far higher than any of its predecessors have gone.

Related: Starship and Super Heavy: SpaceX's Mars-colonizing vehicles in images.

Starship is the huge, next-gen vehicle that SpaceX is building to get people and payloads to distant destinations such as the moon and Mars, launch satellites to orbit and perform all of the company's other spaceflight needs.

The 165-foot-tall (50 meters) Starship vehicle will launch from Earth atop a giant rocket known as Super Heavy, which has yet to fly even in prototype form.

Both elements of this spaceflight system will be fully reusable, Musk has said; Super Heavy will return to Earth for vertical landings, and Starship will make multiple trips to and from the moon, Mars or wherever else it has been sent.

(Starship will be powerful enough to launch itself off the moon and Mars, but it will need Super Heavy's help to get off Earth.).

(The full-fledged Starship will be powered by six Raptors, and Super Heavy will have about 30 of the engines, Musk has said.).