Starship's 7th Flight: The Most Important for 3 Reasons

© SpaceX

All Starship flights are important for SpaceX, but this 7th mission, the first of 2025, has a special flavor. This ambitious flight is divided into several sequences. They all include new parts. One of the first highlights of this flight should be the return of the first stage.

After less than 3 minutes of thrust, allowing to pass MaxQ (the moment when the ship is subjected to the strongest external pressures), the first stage of the Starship should fall back to Earth. As during the 5th flight, SpaceX would like to recover it with its articulated arm.

To follow the Starship flight, meet this Thursday evening from 11 p.m. (French time). You can follow the launch from the SpaceX website available here.

A version 2.0 of the Starship

© Flickr/SpaceX

Although the rocket erected on the Boca Chica launch pad still has the same name and the same face, it is in reality a a completely new version of the Starship. Over the past two months, SpaceX has made numerous changes to its launcher.

Starship will notably be entitled to “additional protection” under its heat shield. The steering fins have also been modified. They will now be smaller and closer to the nose of the craft in order to “reduce their exposure to the heat during re-entry” in the words of SpaceX.

A great first

But this new Starship flight will not only serve to test new concepts. SpaceX should take advantage of it to achieve a major first, releasing payloads into orbit. 17 minutes after takeoff, the flight plan calls for the launch of 10 “true-false” Starlink satellites. Identical in size and weight, they will not be functional and will quickly return to Earth.

They are only to serve as a demonstrator, proving that SpaceX is capable of sending payloads into space with its Starship.

A reusable rocket

By trying to recover the first stage of its rocket during each launch, SpaceX would like to reuse certain parts of the Starship from one flight to the next. This recycling of the rocket's parts would allow significant savings, but also to fly the rocket more often.

SpaceX plans to begin reusing its engines with this 7th flight of the Starship. Of the 33 engines that form the basis of the rocket, 1 of them has already been used. It was recovered from the first stage of the Starship during the 5th flight, on October 13th.

An even more ambitious future

© Ganapathy Kumar/Unsplash

If this 7th flight of the Starship has something to excite us about, the future of SpaceX is just as exciting. The company has been selected by NASA to bring the astronauts of the Artemis 3 mission back to Earth (after their passage on the Moon). It is the Starship that will take care of this delicate mission.

Before getting there, it must nevertheless convince NASA and pass the various (very demanding) safety tests. This mission is therefore further proof of the Starship's proper functioning.

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