Aerial photos of SpaceX's Starship site reveal the stunning evolution of its Mars-rocket facility amid a South Texas beach community

At that time, SpaceX workers descended upon Boca Chica to develop the company's land into a rudimentary launch pad and construct the first Starship spaceship prototype, called Starhopper, to test out a brand-new Raptor rocket engine.

The vehicle is the shiny steel rocket shown at center. Though its nosecone later blew off in powerful windstorm, the main rocket body held up and eventually launched over 500 feet into the air and landed itself in August 2019, proving the core system worked.

As Musk told Ars Technica in March, the goal is to eventually build one flight-ready Starship a week in Boca Chica — and that establishing an efficient, cost-effective factory operation to do so is perhaps the most challenging aspect of the effort.

As Business Insider first reported, SpaceX plans to turn the region into its own private village complete with recreational activities.

Signs of that effort are apparent, such as a large fire pit that looks to be a piece of Starship rocket scrap metal, and rows of kayaks.

As CNBC first reported, Musk told all SpaceX employees that making Starship a reality was the company's "top priority" immediately following the successful launch of its first astronauts to orbit.

The property was sold to SpaceX in early 2020, and it's a model home for a planned community of the 1960s and 1970s called Kopernik Shores. Though the community never panned out due to a devastating hurricane, the home remained intact and was remodeled in recent decades.

Musk is reported to stay in the house when he visits Boca Chica.

There is currently no municipal water line to Boca Chica, so residents have to have it delivered by truck and stored in cisterns. However, the arrow here points out what appears to be a rainwater catch system SpaceX is using for gray water.

An aerial image taken later on by Atilano (not shown in this article) clearly shows toilets and water storage tanks at the end of the rainwater catch system.

The large metal sphere at the top-right is called a header tank, and it's designed to store liquid methane for landing.

Other liquid-fueled rockets, including SpaceX's current Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy systems, use tanks of liquid helium to expand into gas, pressurize emptying fuel tanks, and help force propellants out of a rocket nozzle at incredible rates.

Starship, however, is designed to rely on only methane and oxygen — substances that could, ostensibly, be manufactured on Mars with water and air — and the header tank helps "autogenously" pressurize larger tanks to push out propellants. (No helium required, since the gas can't be easily collected on Mars.)

The pop-up dining facility sits just outside the gray Stargate complex, which was built for SpaceX by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and also functions as a student research facility.

For his part, Musk expects many failures to occur with Starship prototypes. In fact, he anticipates about 20 will have to be made before one reaches orbit.

As Business Insider first reported in September 2019, SpaceX earned FAA approval to change its original (and now very dated) plans for the site: from a commercial satellite launch facility into an experimental Mars-rocket development site and spaceport.

That approval operated within a larger Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, which the FAA approved in 2014 and made room for suborbital rockets (and early Starship prototypes qualify as such).

But as Border Report wrote on July 1, the FAA now says SpaceX will first have to pass a new environmental analysis before it can launch a Starship into low-Earth orbit.

If another and very extensive EIS review is planned, as opposed to a quicker Environmental Assessment, SpaceX may face newfound scrutiny and opposition from some nearby community members — though generally the region is supportive of the project for its potential to bring jobs and and an economic boost.