Starship Flight 7: SpaceX delays until the 13th

SpaceX has delayed the launch of its seventh Starship rocket to Monday, January 13. Little details were shared about the delay, which was first announced by Elon Musk during a Diablo stream on X.

SpaceX officially delayed the flight of Starship Flight 7 on Wednesday morning in a post on X, stating it will now launch no earlier than January 13. SpaceX teams were also keeping an eye on the weather for pre-launch operations.

This likely means the delays were due to poor launch weather on launch day this weekend, and the teams are hoping for better weather earlier next week.

In typical Elon fashion, this news was unofficially announced through a Diablo stream Tuesday night on X. Answering questions from the chat, he discussed new Gronk features (the AI of X) and whether or not they should bring back Vine. Then Musk shared that “Starship Flight 7 looks like it pushed three or four days.”

It’s a poorly kept secret that most of Musk’s days, when he’s not traveling or physically at one of his companies’ locations, are spent playing Diablo and in meetings (while also playing Diablo). Musk also regularly answers questions about various Tesla, X, and SpaceX projects while streaming. He even shared audio of a meeting where they discussed how they almost lost Flight 5’s booster during the final seconds of the catch.

Starship Flight 7 will be another suborbital flight by SpaceX to further test its Starship vehicle design. This time, the flight will feature a Block 2 Starship upper stage with redesigned forward flaps, new avionics, larger fuel tanks, and a new heat shield. Inside the payload will be Starlink satellite simulators that are expected to be deployed while in space and re-enter with the ship.

SpaceX is also hoping to catch its Starship booster again using the launch tower arms, like it did on Flight 5.

In 2025, SpaceX is attempting to get Starship nearly operational with orbital missions, deployment of actual working payloads (likely full-scale Starlink V2 satellites), and potentially reusing hardware. Flight 7 will also begin the last item with its booster reflying Raptor engines that first flew on Flight 5.