Starship Flight 7

Ship 33 was the first Block 2 Starship: stretched, restructured, and avionically reworked from the Block 1 ships that had preceded it. SpaceX intended Flight 7 to be the first Starship to demonstrate orbital-class payload deployment, releasing ten Starlink mass simulators along the way.

On 16 January 2025, Booster 14 and Ship 33 lifted from OLP-1 in the late afternoon. The booster's flight was nominal — it returned to Starbase and was caught by the tower arms, the second booster recovery after Booster 12. Higher up, harmonic vibration in the Block 2 ship's propulsion section ran several times stronger than ground tests had predicted, opened propellant leaks, and started a fire in the aft compartment.

SpaceX lost contact with the ship at T+8:26, at 146 kilometres of altitude. The autonomous flight termination system destroyed it minutes later. Burning debris fell over Turks and Caicos and the surrounding islands, prompting airspace closures across the Caribbean for more than an hour.