SpaceX continues its spear to make history with the latest successful Starship Flight 7 launch today. The seventh flight test of Starship was launched from Boca Chica, Texas, at around 5 p.m. EST, on 16 January. The launch however, was only partly successful. While SpaceX did manage to catch the booster for a second time, it lost the main ship in space due to an ‘anamoly’.
CEO Elon Musk then confirmed that the anamoly was apparently an “oxygen/fuel leak” inside Starship, that built up too much pressure inside the cavity of the craft. Musk wrote on X that SpaceX will “obviously [be] double-checking for leaks” going forward, add a fire suppression system to that part of the ship, and increase the venting area to help reduce any pressure.
This Starship flight was special in many terms, but there were two main highlights. Firstly, it is the first Starship flight to carry a payload deployment test with a set of 10 replica Starlink satellites. These dummy satellites are similar in size and weight to the next-generation Starlink satellites. And second, Starship’s Super Heavy booster will reuse one of its 33 engines for the first time.
This Starship, is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built since the spacecraft’s debut flight in April 2023.
Liftoff of Starship! pic.twitter.com/7lrFjGXzAi
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 16, 2025
After this liftoff, the Starship was supposed to deploy 10 testing payload versions of Starlink internet satellites. But these mock Starlink satellites will only stay in space for about an hour, as they will follow Starship’s trajectory and splash down in the Indian Ocean. However, for Starship, SpaceX again successfully caught the booster with two mechanical arms, just similar to the successful catch during Starship’s fifth launch test previously in October 2024. It’s part of SpaceX’s efforts to reuse rockets, making space travel more sustainable and cost-effective. This is similar to how the Elon Musk-owned company recovers and reuses Falcon boosters.
“This new year will be transformational for Starship, with the goal of bringing reuse of the entire system online and flying increasingly ambitious missions as we iterate towards being able to send humans and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars,” SpaceX said in its first Starship test of 2025 – Flight 7 mission preview.
Under this seventh test flight, the Starship system is made up of two separate stages, including Super Heavy and Ship (or Starship). Interestingly, both of these stages are designed to be fully reusable and capable of being quickly refurbished for multiple flights. Talking about the details, Super Heavy refers to a giant booster that provides the initial thrust to launch the spacecraft into space. Meanwhile, the ‘Ship’ is primarily the upper stage that is designed to carry payloads into space.
Earlier, the Starship rocket’s sixth test flight took place in November. This flight gained additional significance as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump was also present there. But unfortunately, because of a launchpad issue, the Super Heavy booster was forced to target a water landing in the Gulf of Mexico rather than its intended recovery attempt.
As the space economy is projected to grow to $1.8 trillion by 2035, these Starship tests are crucial for SpaceX considering the company’s future business plans and partnerships with NASA and other space-tech companies.
Meanwhile, this 7th Starship launch comes at a time when Jeff Bezos’ space-tech firm Blue Origin successfully launched its New Glenn heavy-lift rocket into orbit for the first time on Thursday. However, the company was unable to recover the rocket’s reusable booster stage.
