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SpaceX’s Starship is set to take flight for its seventh occasion early next week, assuming everything proceeds as intended.
SpaceX declared today (Jan. 8) that it is aiming for Monday (Jan. 13) for Flight 7 of Starship, a fully reusable megarocket standing 400 feet tall (122 meters) that is designed to assist humanity in establishing a presence on the moon and Mars.
Starship is scheduled for liftoff on Monday at 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT) from Starbase, SpaceX’s production and launch facility located in South Texas. Viewers can follow the launch live; the company will stream the flight starting about 35 minutes prior to takeoff.
To date, Starship has completed six flights — including two in 2023 and those in March, June, October, and November of the previous year.
Related: SpaceX’s Starship Flight 7 test will deploy simulated Starlink satellites for the first time
The October mission included a historic catch of Starship’s Super Heavy booster by the launch tower at Starbase, an achievement that SpaceX aims to replicate during Flight 7. (This catch was also intended for Flight 6 in November, however, a communication problem with the tower disrupted the catch attempt during that endeavor.)
The upper stage of Starship, measuring 165 feet (50 m) and known as Starship or simply Ship, will aim for a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean on Monday, similar to its three most recent launches.
SpaceX will also seek to pioneer new advancements during this upcoming mission. For instance, for the first time, Ship will aim to deploy payloads in space — specifically, 10 mock satellites, “comparable in size and weight to next-generation Starlink satellites as the initial test of a satellite deployment mission,” as noted by SpaceX in a Flight 7 mission overview. (Starlink represents SpaceX’s broadband megaconstellation forming in low Earth orbit. The company depends on Starship to complete the construction of this expansive network, which could ultimately encompass over 40,000 spacecraft.)
“The Starlink simulators will follow the same suborbital trajectory as Starship, aiming for splashdown in the Indian Ocean,” SpaceX elaborated.
Furthermore, Super Heavy will utilize reused components for the first time during Flight 7 — “a Raptor engine from the booster that was launched and recovered on Starship’s fifth flight test,” as per the mission description.
The Starship launch on Monday is set to be part of a busy and thrilling period in space flight, assuming everything goes as planned. For instance, Blue Origin’s powerful New Glenn rocket is expected to conduct its inaugural launch early Friday morning (Jan. 10), and a SpaceX Falcon 9 is set to send two private lunar landers aloft in the early hours of Jan. 15.
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