Starship Test Flight 7

Today is a big day for spaceflight. As David wrote earlier today, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket successfully launched for the first time, though an attempt to land the booster apparently failed. 

Also today, the 7th test flight of Space X’s Starship should have happened by the time this post goes up. It was originally scheduled for yesterday but the launch was delayed because of weather. The weather is clear today so that shouldn’t be a problem.

You may remember that Space X managed to catch the rocket booster during the 5th test flight using the tower known as Mechazilla. President-elect Trump has told the story of watching that on television several times. Space X waived off a repeat attempt during the 6th test flight because of a technical issue. So a big question today is whether they can do it again.

Today’s launch includes several new designs/features to Starship that make it different from the previous test flights. For one thing, this is the first Starship that is considered block 2, a newer design which has made the forward fins smaller and moved them back and up slightly to reduce heating issues. 

3/
Besides this, the flaps have also been moved upwards and have had a change in shape, becoming smaller, more lightweight, and decreasing heating during reentry.
The same is true for the aerocovers, which are almost non-existent now. pic.twitter.com/K78IVwzqLL

— Supersonic Backflips (@supersonicflipz) July 25, 2024

This Starship is also carrying a bunch of dummy Starlink satellites which it will attempt to eject today. Elon Musk has previously compared the design to a pez dispenser.

Dummy Starlink Sats being loaded into Starship! pic.twitter.com/TtYZdmKENV

— Oliver🇬🇧 (@ollywood360) January 16, 2025

SpaceX announced that Starship will soon launch V3 Starlink satellites

Each launch will add 60 Tbps of capacity — over 20x more than a Falcon 9 launch today pic.twitter.com/W7FI3ALRLL

— Dima Zeniuk (@DimaZeniuk) December 31, 2024

As with previous flights, this one is set to land the ship in the Indian Ocean though hopefully the booster will be able to return and be caught by the tower. But also being tested today is a pin on Starship that could allow it to be caught by the tower as well on future flights.

SpaceX will also test a nonstructural version of a catch pin for Starship during reentry. This is only bolted onto the side and will show if it can survive reentry. If this works, SpaceX intends to attempt a catch as early as Flight 8. The additional test objectives are numerous, with this being the first Block 2 ship SpaceX will attempt to verify all of the design changes.  

Here’s the live video of the launch which, as I write this is only about 15 minutes away if all goes well.

Update: Reports were that they lost contact with the ship after several engines went out. Looks like the ship blew up.

Just saw the most insane #spacedebris #meteorshower right now in Turks and Caicos ⁦@elonmusk⁩ what is it?? pic.twitter.com/a7f4MbEB8Q

— Dean Olson (@deankolson87) January 16, 2025