Catch SpaceX Starship Flight 7 liftoff from a top angle

On January 16, Starship Flight Test 7 ascended into Space and achieved a new milestone and SpaceX shared a top-down view of the ship’s liftoff from the Starbase.

A well over 20-second video shows the engine ignition followed by smoke and dust spreading around the launch tower as this massive rocket makes its way to space, in between the fire.

The super heavy Starship booster is equipped with 33 Raptor engines and this time the company has utilized the first-ever flight-proven hardware for the entire test program. This was a Raptor engine used in the Flight 5 booster, which was recorded after a successful catch.

SpaceX Starship liftoff (Credit – SpaceX)

During the liftoff, Starship generates more than 16 million pounds of thrust. The first uses sub-cooled liquid methane and liquid oxygen to lift the rocket from the launch pad.

The upper stage sits on top of the booster and houses the payload. The ship has 100-150 tons of payload capacity. In the meantime, the ship also has 6 Raptor engines including Raptor vacuum engines.

During Flight 7, the company performed a successful liftoff, followed by hot-staging and boostback burn for the first stage. However, things didn’t go well for the second stage, as it lost contact and soon exploded in Earth’s atmosphere.

Meanwhile, the company caught the first stage booster in the launch tower arms and completed the catch for the second time.

Launching Starship on its seventh flight test pic.twitter.com/l2B4pAazUN

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 18, 2025