SpaceX is targeting Monday, January 13, for the seventh test flight of its Starship megarocket.
The 120-meter-vehicle will lift off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, as it did on its six previous test flights.
SpaceX will live stream the launch — the first Starship flight since November — from its X account, and also via its website.
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“The upcoming flight test will launch a new generation ship with significant upgrades, attempt Starship’s first payload deployment test, fly multiple reentry experiments geared towards ship catch and reuse, and launch and return the Super Heavy booster,” the Elon Musk-led spaceflight company said in a post
SpaceX also said that the vehicle’s forward flaps have been reduced in size and moved toward the vehicle tip, away from the heat shield, a redesign that significantly reduces the flaps’ exposure to reentry heating while also simplifying the underlying mechanisms and protective tiling.
Other upgrades include improvements to the propulsion system, which will bring additional vehicle performance and the ability to fly longer missions, and also to the vehicle’s avionics, which have undergone a “complete redesign.”
When it reaches space, the upper-stage Starship spacecraft will deploy 10 Starlink simulators, similar in size and weight to next-generation Starlink satellites, in the first such satellite deployment by the Starship.
The mission will also attempt to “catch” the returning Super Heavy booster using giant mechanical arms on the launch tower. SpaceX achieved this spectacular feat at the first attempt in the fifth test flight in October, but an anomaly during the sixth flight meant that the rocket had to come down in the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX promised that 2025 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.”
Check back soon for full details on how to watch the live stream of the highly anticipated seventh mission for SpaceX’s Starship rocket, the most powerful vehicle ever to fly.