UPDATED 6:29 AM ET Jan. 17, 2025 PUBLISHED 11:50 AM ET Jan. 16, 2025 PUBLISHED 11:50 AM EST Jan. 16, 2025 SHARE BOCA CHICA BEACH, Tx. — SpaceX lost all communications with Starship's upper stage after it was able to catch the ship's massive rocket booster in the launch pad’s chopsticks for the second time during the seventh test flight on Thursday. What You Need To Know All communications with Starship's upper stage was lost; SpaceX states a fire was started during the launch Super Heavy is the rocket booster part of the vehicle, while the spacecraft is called Starship; together, they are known as Starship SpaceX caught the first-stage booster SpaceX shared some of those updates: A block of planned upgrades to the Starship upper stage will debut on this flight test, bringing major improvements to reliability and performance. The vehicle’s forward flaps have been reduced in size and shifted towards the vehicle tip and away from the heat shield, significantly reducing their exposure to reentry heating while simplifying the underlying mechanisms and protective tiling. Redesigns to the propulsion system, including a 25 percent increase in propellant volume, the vacuum jacketing of feedlines, a new fuel feedline system for the vehicle’s Raptor vacuum engines, and an improved propulsion avionics module controlling vehicle valves and reading sensors, all add additional vehicle performance and the ability to fly longer missions. The ship’s heat shield will also use the latest generation tiles and includes a backup layer to protect from missing or damaged tiles. In addition, once in orbit, Starship would have deployed 10 Starlink simulators to test how payloads can be deployed. These simulators were about the same size and weight as the next generation of Starlink satellites. SpaceX owns the Starlink company. The Starship’s upper stage had several tiles that were removed to stress-test vulnerable areas of the craft. And others of different material were going to be tested to see how well they could protect Starship. Starship was expected to splash down in the Indian Ocean. New tests for the Super Heavy first-stage booster After the stage separation, SpaceX did catch the 232-foot (71 meter) tall first-stage booster Super Heavy using the launch tower’s metal arms, which have been called chopsticks. The company shared some new tests and designs being used when it comes to catching the first-stage booster. “On the sides of the vehicle, non-structural versions of ship catch fittings are installed to test the fittings’ thermal performance, along with a smoothed and tapered edge of the tile line to address hot spots observed during reentry on Starship’s sixth flight test. The ship’s reentry profile is being designed to intentionally stress the structural limits of the flaps while at the point of maximum entry dynamic pressure. Finally, several radar sensors will be tested on the tower chopsticks with the goal of increasing the accuracy when measuring distances between the chopsticks and a returning vehicle during catch.” In addition to hardware upgrades to the launch and catch tower, the Super Heavy booster will reuse a Raptor engine from Starship’s 5th flight test. It was during that test that the booster was caught by the launch tower for the first time.