Musk loses Starship, but lands booster
January 17, 2025

SpaceX lost a Starship on its seventh test flight in a fiery explosion over the Turks & Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. However, the rocket’s booster was successfully captured back at the launch site by the Texas pad’s ‘chopsticks’. Launch was at 5.37pm Texas time on January 16th.
SpaceX said: “Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn. Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause. With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability.”
Elon Musk, in a tweet on X, wryly said: “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed.”
Also lost were ten dummy satellites which replicated the weight of a real cargo.
Musk has consistently used the test and test again routine even though there have been set-backs.
Telemetry from the Starship was lost just over eight minutes after launch and just as the rocket was moving towards orbit.
“We (lost) all communications with the ship,” a SpaceX launch commentator said of the Starship. “That is essentially telling us we had an anomaly with the upper stage.” A moment later, he confirmed: “We did lose the upper stage.”
The FAA closed down all flights from Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports because of what they said was falling debris.
Musk later said: “Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity. Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area.”
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