For the seventh test flight, SpaceX has prepared a taller and heavier version of Starship

Last Thursday, January 9, SpaceX rolled out an enlarged version of the Starship spacecraft to the launch pad of the Starbase spaceport in South Texas and installed it on the Super Heavy accelerator – the seventh test flight of the rocket could take place on Monday, January 13. The launch window opens at 22:00 UTC (January 14, 01:00 Moscow time). This will be the seventh full-scale test flight of the Super Heavy booster and Starship, and the first in 2025.

Image source: x.com/SpaceX

SpaceX intends to repeat some of the maneuvers it performed during the last two tests. The company will try to return the Super Heavy booster to the launch pad and capture it with two holders – this was possible on the fifth flight, but not on the sixth due to damaged sensors on the holders. One of the 33 Raptor engines on the next instance of the booster, designated Booster 14 in the SpaceX nomenclature, was used in the first stage of the rocket during an October test flight – the company wants to make both the booster and the spacecraft reusable. Separating from the first stage, Starship will fire its six engines, accelerate to near orbital speed, fly halfway around the world, after which gravity will return it to the atmosphere. SpaceX engineers will try to make a controlled entry of Starship into the atmosphere and carry out a soft landing of the ship in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia.

The most noticeable difference between the new Starship Version 2 or Block 2 and the first version of the ship is the front flaps of the ship – their size has decreased, and they themselves have moved closer to the nose of the Starship, which will help protect them when the ship enters the atmosphere. SpaceX is also developing an upgraded version of the Super Heavy, which will be slightly taller than the existing one, but the seventh test flight will use a first-generation booster. This mission will carry more than 4,700 tons of fuel and oxidizer on board Super Heavy and Starship; The volume of the ship’s fuel tanks was increased by 25%, and ten mock-ups of Starlink communications satellites were placed in the payload compartment. As a result, the total height of the rocket reached 123.1 m. SpaceX is now developing an even larger Starship Version 3, which will have nine engines instead of six and will be able to deliver up to 200 tons of cargo into low Earth orbit.

Other changes in Starship Version 2 include:

• Vacuum sheathing of fuel supply lines;
• A new fuel supply system for the ship’s Raptor vacuum engines;
• Improved avionics module with control of ship valves and reading sensors;
• Redesigned navigation and star positioning sensors;
• Built-in smart batteries and power supplies that distribute 2.7 MW of power across the ship’s systems;
• The number of cameras on board the ship has increased to 30.

A next-generation avionics system will be needed on future missions to help prove that Starship can be refueled in orbit and that the ship can return to the launch pad. Starship received a more powerful on-board computer and new antennas – the ship will be able to communicate with Starlink and GPS satellites, which will help it broadcast high-definition video over a 120 Mbit/s wide channel and telemetry. The Starship skin design has been improved to include a backup layer in case of damage to the external tiles.

Approximately 17 minutes after launch, Starship will deploy 10 payloads similar in size and mass to the Starlink satellites – they will fly along a suborbital trajectory after the ship and enter the waters of an unpopulated area of ​​​​the Indian Ocean. In space, SpaceX will again fire one of the Raptor engines on the spacecraft, the first time this has been done during its sixth test flight. This is an important step because it opens up the ability for the ship to independently maneuver in low Earth orbit and move further, including to the Moon or Mars, but first it will have to master the technology of orbital refueling.

«The biggest technological problem that remains for Starship,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk considers the heat shield. During the last three launches, spacecraft landed safely in the Indian Ocean, but upon re-entry, heat-absorbing tiles tore off their skin, struggling to withstand temperatures of up to 1430 °C. For the upcoming flight, engineers completely removed tiles from some areas of the ship in order to “test the strength” of these parts; They also smoothed and narrowed the edge line of the tile where the ceramic heat shield meets the ship’s stainless steel skin—this should help eliminate problematic hot spots found during reentry on the last test flight. Several updated tile options will be tested, including ones with active cooling. Finally, Starship will fly a more complex trajectory during its descent, which will help reveal the structural limitations of the new design flaps at the point of maximum pressure during reentry.