Photo of the Week: Falcon Heavy booster landings without the rock shower

When photographer Craig Bailey texted us this photo of the Falcon Heavy boosters landing, his colleague, photographer Tim Shortt, immediately responded: "I think, nay, I KNOW this has gotta be the photo of the week."

Space Reporter Brooke Edward chimed in "Photo of the Year!" Photographer Malcolm Denemark added, "Awesome."

I was equally struck by the composition, the colors, the clarity. It looked almost like a work of art.

There was never any debate: not only did we have our leading image for the Falcon Heavy launch story but we had our "Photo of the Week" selected early.

I asked Craig to tell me about the photo taken Tuesday. He said it was taken at a new remote camera location at Launch Complex 14 made available by the Space Force for this mission.

"LC-14 saw some of the earliest crewed missions from the Space Coast, most notably John Glenn, aboard Friendship 7, when he became the first American to orbit the Earth," Craig told me.

"At Complex 14 we get a pretty good view of Landing Zone-1 and 2 (the former LC-13 now used by SpaceX to recover its boosters). We've set remote cameras at LZ-1 and 2 before. It's an awesome photo but its hard on equipment due to the debris thrown by the landing booster(s)."

"This site isn't as close, but you can still get nice pictures without the free rock shower provided at LZ-1."

For more of our Falcon Heavy launch photos, go to floridatoday.com/space.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Rare view of Falcon Heavy booster landings | Photo of the Week