SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Tuesday that the company’s ambitious Starship launch vehicle’s next flight test is now expected to be next week, later than his previous timeline of Jan. 10.
What Happened: “Starship flight 7, it looks like it’s pushed by 3 or 4 days. So probably sometime next week,” Musk said in a live stream on his social media platform X.
The CEO had previously said that the company is aiming to launch Starship on its next flight test on Jan. 10, the same day as Blue Origin is looking to launch its New Glenn rocket to orbit for the first time.
Musk did not provide the reasons for the delay or if the new timeline was considering the upcoming launch from the Bezos-owned company.
Targets For Upcoming Flight Test: SpaceX has previously said that its Starship vehicle, currently undergoing testing and development, will launch from Starbase in Texas for its seventh flight test carrying 10 Starlink simulators which are similar in size and weight to the company’s next-generation Starlink satellites in a bid to demonstrate its capabilities in the satellite launch segment.
For the upcoming flight, SpaceX is looking to catch the two-stage vehicle’s booster back at the launch pad at Starbase with the launch tower’s metallic arms like on its fifth test flight in October. However, in case of any safety concerns, the company will splash it down in the Gulf of Mexico, it said.
The spacecraft, meanwhile, is slated to be splashed down in the Indian Ocean on the upcoming test.
While SpaceX has conducted 6 test flights of its ambitious launch vehicle to date, none of them carried any payload. The last test flight of Starship was in November.
Why It Matters: Starship is key to many big ambitions in the field of space exploration.
While NASA is looking forward to landing humans back on the surface of the Moon after a gap of over 50 years with the help of a custom version of the Starship, Musk dreams of taking humans to the planet Mars aboard the vehicle.
The last time humans set foot on the Moon was in 1972 with Apollo 17. Since then, no crew has traveled beyond low-Earth orbit.
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Photo courtesy: SpaceX
