SpaceX test-fired the upper stage of its seventh Starship megarocket again recently, this time practicing for an in-space engine burn.
The company ignited all six of the Flight 7 Starship spacecraft's Raptor engines for about 10 seconds on a test stand at its Starbase facility in South Texas on Sunday (Dec. 15).
SpaceX announced that important prelaunch test via X that same day. And today (Dec. 17), in another X post, the company revealed that it has conducted another static fire with that same vehicle — a trial of a quite different sort.
"Single-engine static fire demonstrating a flight-like startup for an in-space burn," SpaceX wrote in the post, which featured two videos of the nearly two-minute-long burn.
The company has also static-fired Flight 7's Super Heavy first-stage booster, conducting that 33-engine test at Starbase last week.
Related: What's next for SpaceX's Starship after its successful 6th test flight?
SpaceX is developing Starship to help humanity colonize the moon and Mars, and perform a variety of other spaceflight tasks (such as completing the assembly of its Starlink broadband megaconstellation).
The fully reusable, stainless-steel vehicle is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built; Starship stands about 400 feet (122 meters) tall when stacked.
Starship has launched on six test flights to date, in April and November of 2023 and March, June, October and November of this year. The vehicle has performed very well; on the most recent three flights, for example, both stages made it to space and survived the trip back down through Earth's atmosphere in one piece.
SpaceX has not yet announced a target launch date for Flight 7, but an email sent by NASA to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration suggests that the company is eyeing Jan. 11. (NASA intends to observe the upcoming flight using a Gulfstream V jet, according to that email.)
