SpaceX’s Starship scheduled for seventh launch

SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket is slated to launch for the seventh time on Friday (SAST) in a crucial test of its ability to carry and place satellites into orbit.
The company had planned on launching on Wednesday but announced a 24-hour delay due to weather conditions.
The 403-foot-tall (123-meter) rocket will try to deploy 10 dummy satellites designed to mimic the size, shape and weight of the upgraded Starlink satellites that Starship will be launching in the future.
This will be the first time the world’s heaviest and most powerful rocket attempts to deploy payloads, an important milestone in readying the rocket for operational use.
The dummy satellites will not remain in space but will eventually be dragged back to Earth.
As in previous test flights, the upper portion of the rocket will take a similar path back to Earth, undertaking a controlled plunge into the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX will also attempt to use giant mechanical arms to “catch” the rocket’s Super Heavy lower portion — the same stunning engineering maneuver it completed during the rocket’s fifth test flight in October.
Showing that recovery of the Starship Super Heavy booster is possible again is critical to the developmental progress of the vehicle, which SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has long touted will be fully reusable.
Starship was expected to lift off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas at 4 p.m. CST on Wednesday (12 a.m. SAST on Thursday).
During the rocket’s sixth test flight on 19 November, attended by President-elect Donald Trump, SpaceX skipped the booster catch, citing technical issues.
If conditions for the catch are again not met during this launch, the booster will instead land in the Gulf of Mexico.
The rocket will also attempt to reignite one of its six Raptor engines during the flight, a feat it achieved for the first time during the vehicle’s sixth test.
Such re-ignition is essential to Musk’s eventual goal of landing on Mars because it would allow Starship to perform mid-flight maneuvers and control its descent.

In the past, some of Starship’s launches have ended with explosions and other damage to the vehicle — emblems of SpaceX’s fly-fail-fix iterative approach to engineering.
SpaceX said that for this launch, it upgraded the rocket’s heat shield — designed to cushion the extreme heat and forces as it plunges through the atmosphere.
Other upgrades to the vehicle include a redesigned propulsion system, more powerful flight computer and additional cameras for flight monitoring, according to the company.