SpaceX spaceship launch: date, time and how to watch

SpaceX managed to catch its Super Heavy booster for the second time. During Starship’s 7th test flight from Boca Chica, Texas, the Super Heavy lowered into the launch tower’s “wand” arms, allowing it to grasp the booster.

Despite the successful capture, SpaceX lost communication with the Starship spacecraft mounted atop the booster. “It successfully separated from the Super Heavy booster, but during that ascent phase, a few engines failed, and then shortly after, we lost communication with the vehicle,” said Kate Tice of SpaceX during the stream. “We assume we lost the ship.”

According to SpaceX, “Starship suffered a rapid and unplanned disassembly during its ascent,” but teams are still reviewing the data to find out why.

Several people who said they were on the Turks and Caicos Islands said they saw the Starship’s re-entry debris and posted videos of it on social media.

This version of Starship this time featured “major reliability and performance improvements,” making the vehicle slightly taller, according to SpaceX.

In addition to a redesigned propulsion system and improved flight computer, this flight featured a new heat shield with “multiple metal tile options, including one with active cooling” to test alternative materials and a “backup layer to protect against tiles missing or damaged. Before the flight, SpaceX also said that on the Starship’s upper stage, “a significant number of tiles would be removed to test vulnerable areas of the vehicle”, but it is unclear if this was a factor in its destruction.

The Super Heavy booster in this test was also the first to reuse a Raptor engine from a previous flight test.

Measuring 403 feet tall, Starship is the largest launch vehicle ever designed. It is made up of two parts: the Starship spacecraft, designed to carry crew and cargo into orbit, and the Super Heavy Booster, delivered with 33 SpaceX Raptor engines that help propel the Starship into space. The Starship spacecraft and its Super Heavy booster are reusable.

On its seventh test flight, Starship was to deploy 10 Starlink “simulators” for the first time. These fake satellites are the same size and weight as Starlink’s real internet satellites, but they weren’t meant to stay in space. Instead, they would have had “the same suborbital trajectory as Starship” and would “disappear upon entry.”

Update January 16: Noted the outcome of the flight and added videos of the debris over the Turks and Caicos Islands.