SpaceX's Starship Test Flight 7, January 16, 2025, lifted off from the Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, at 4:37 pm CST. during the ascent, the Starship upper stage experienced an “anomaly“ rapid disassembly and was lost, with debris seen reentering Earth's atmosphere over the Turks and Caicos Islands as discussed on 1/15/2025.

This failed test flight was the first to attempt deploying payloads, with 10 Starlink simulators planned to be released, but contact was lost before this could be confirmed. The flight also aimed to test various reentry experiments, but these were not completed due to the loss of the upper stage.

So far reusability remains illusory as not a single starship survives from the 7 launches, with 100% failure where 🚀 3 Starships have experienced RUD, exploded or broken apart and other 4 💥, haven’t survived re entry or 💥🔥at splashdown/ landing. Super heavy booster landed 2 out of 7 flights. Early test launches and initial operational launches are estimated to cost around $100 million. While significantly less than other heavy-lift launch vehicles estimated losses for starship launches so far are minimally $700 million -1B due to destroyed 5 super heavy boosters and all starships.

In the meantime much smaller falcon 9 completed over 400 flights.

Starship launches history:

Out of the 7 Starship launches, there have been 3 failures where the spacecraft exploded or broke apart:

The first launch on April 20, 2023, ended with an explosion before stage separation. The second launch on November 18, 2023, resulted in both the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage experiencing "rapid unscheduled disassemblies." Todays seventh launch on January 16, 2025, failed when the spacecraft broke up, with debris seen reentering Earth's atmosphere over the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Third Launch (March 14, 2024) the Starship upper stage achieved a partial orbit, but the spacecraft was LOST during reentry….

Fourth Launch (May 5, 2024) Starship reached orbit and performed several in-space maneuvers, but, the spacecraft was lost and was not recovered Fifth Launch (July 20, 2024) the spacecraft was lost during the final stages of reentry.

Sixth Launch (October 1, 2024) This time the spacecraft managed to survive reentry, though it did not achieve a soft landing,🤷‍♂️and exploded 💥at the splash