SpaceX has delayed its Starship Flight 7 launch and landing test which was scheduled for no earlier than (NET) Friday, 10th January 2025.
The spaceflight and astronautics community was excited for Friday’s launch attempt that had a backup window of Saturday 11th Jan. However, for unexplained reasons, SpaceX has pushed the Flight 7 Starship test (IFT-7) a few days further.
The announcement of the Flight 7 Starship launch test delay came from the company’s CEO through an unconventional channel, a video game stream on X. Elon Musk plays Diablo 4 and posts its gameplay videos inside the game’s community on X (Twitter).
“Starship Flight 7 — looks like it’s pushed about 3 or 4 days — so, probably sometime next week,” Musk announced the delay during a gameplay video stream.
Update: SpaceX confirms the new Flight 7 date.
So, the Starship’s seventh flight test is pushed 3 to 4 days ahead of its initial window on Friday. This means that SpaceX will also not attempt the launch and landing test during the entire weekend.
Elon Musk’s statement gives SpaceX a flexible timeline for the Starship Flight 7 launch mission. A specific date and day for next week have not yet been officially confirmed.
Just yesterday, we published a detailed report on Flight 7 Starship upgrades done to the V2 Ship 33 prototype, Super Heavy Booster 14, and the launch tower (Mechazilla) for this flight test.
Spaceflight tracking info also confirms that 10th January 2025 is not the confirmed date of Starship Flight 7.
SpaceX might be performing some more upgrades or tweaks to Starship to improve the chances of a more successful launch because the Flight 7 test includes additional experiments like Starlink satellite simulator payload, new heat tiles and thermal protection system, using flight-proven hardware (Flight 5 Raptor engine) for the first time, and several other improvements and changes.
The SpaceX engineering team likely needs more time to make small changes to get the final approval for the Flight 7 Starship launch and landing test (IFT-7). Stay tuned for the latest Flight 7 news and updates.
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