SpaceX lost Starship Flight 7 upper stage after RUD

On January 16, 2025, SpaceX launched Starship Flight 7 from Starbase Texas but the company lost the upper stage right after it entered the sub-orbital plane.

After hot-staging, all the first-stage telemetry data was nominal as it fired six Raptor engines to take the ship into orbit. However, the ship lost contact with the mission control soon and stopped showing on-screen data.

Starship’s Raptor engines ignite during hot-staging separation. Super Heavy is returning to launch site for catch attempt pic.twitter.com/JaU8XJGua1

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 16, 2025

On the other hand, SpaceX said that the ship experienced a RUD or rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn. It means that the ship caught hardware damage as it was making its way to space.

Unfortunately, there are no details available on the affected hardware and what caused the ship to lose control.

SpaceX team will evaluate the available data and telemetry system to search for the root cause of this RUD. Important insights on this matter will enable the company to learn more about the anomaly and improve vehicle design for future flight tests.

“Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause.” wrote SpaceX on X.

The company had employed a brand new ship for this flight test including new upgrades to the forward flaps, avionics, propellant section, and heat shield tiles. The company also planned to demonstrate payload deployment with Starlink simulators.

However, the upper stage didn’t survive Flight 7 and got lost during the booster landing on Earth but we may see it succeeding in the next Starship test.