Starship flight test 7

Starship flight test 7 was the seventh flight test of a SpaceX Starship launch vehicle. Flight 7 lifted off from Orbital Launch Pad 1 (OLP-1) on January 16, 2025, at 22:37:00 UTC (4:37 pm CST, local time) at the Starbase launch site in Texas. The prototype vehicles flown were Booster 14, a Block 2 vehicle, and Ship 33, the first Block 2 upper stage, which introduced upgrades in structure, avionics, and other systems. The mission was to follow a trajectory similar to the previous flight, with a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean about an hour after liftoff, to be imaged by a NASA observation aircraft. It also planned to test a new Starlink satellite deployment system. With the upgrade to a Block 2 design, Starship surpassed its own record and once again became the heaviest flying object ever built by humankind, at a weight of approximately 5.5 million kilograms (12 million pounds) at liftoff, and the tallest rocket to lift off, succeeding the full Block 1 stack by about 2 meters (6 ft 7 in). However, during Ship 33's initial burn, its engines experienced premature shutdowns, followed by a total loss of telemetry. The vehicle was observed exploding over the Turks and Caicos Islands two to three minutes later, but did not cause any injuries. This incident prompted regional airspace closures lasting over an hour and triggered an FAA-required mishap investigation. Booster 14 returned to the launch site and was caught by the "chopstick" arms on the launch tower at OLP-1, making it the second booster recovered after Booster 12 during flight test 5.