Look on it
SpaceX is set to launch the seventh test flight of its Starship megarocket on Thursday, January 16, and you’ll be able to watch the action live.
The 400-foot-tall (122-meter) spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from SpaceX’s Starbase site in south Texas on Thursday at 5 p.m. EST (10 p.m. GMT; 4 p.m. Texas local time).
You can watch the action live here on Space.com courtesy of SpaceX, or directly through the company. Coverage will begin approximately 35 minutes before launch.
Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. It consists of two stages, both designed to be fully and quickly reusable: a giant booster called Super Heavy and a 165-foot-tall (50-meter) spacecraft known as Starship, or simply Ship.
Related: SpaceX’s Starship Flight 7 test flight will deploy simulated Starlink satellites for the first time
Starship has flown six times to date – twice in 2023 and in March, June, October and November last year. The October mission featured an unprecedented capture of Super Heavy by the launch tower’s “wand” arms – a feat SpaceX wants to repeat on today’s flight.
But the company also plans to do something new on Flight 7: If all goes as planned, Ship will deploy 10 simulated versions of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites. These fake spaceships won’t stay in space for long; they will follow the ship’s path and crash into the Indian Ocean about an hour after takeoff. (SpaceX plans to eventually catch Ship with chopstick arms, but will not attempt to do so on Flight 7.)
Today’s flight will likely be the first of many for Starship in 2025; SpaceX plans to make serious progress on the megarocket in the coming weeks and months.
“This new year will be a transformation for Starship, with the goal of repurposing the entire online system and carrying out increasingly ambitious missions as we progress toward being able to send humans and cargo into Earth orbit, the Moon and Mars,” SpaceX wrote in a Flight 7 mission overview.
Editor’s note: This story was updated on January 15 to reflect SpaceX’s latest launch date.
