After separation from the upper stage, the lower-stage booster will attempt to return to Starbase to land at its launch tower. The company achieved the feat during the fifth flight of Starship on Oct. 13 but was unable to repeat it on the sixth flight in November. That booster diverted to a water landing in the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX aims to launch Starship Flight 7 on Monday (Jan. 13), an ambitious test that will feature an attempted launch-tower catch of the first-stage booster.

Coming off a record-setting 2024, SpaceX continued an aggressive launching schedule with the liftoff Wednesday morning of a Falcon 9 rocket that carried 21 Starlink satellites into lower-Earth orbit.