SpaceX has pushed the date of the Starship Flight 7 launch two days ahead. This is the second time that Elon Musk’s astronautics and spaceflight company has rescheduled the 7th integrated flight test of Starship (IFT-7).
According to the official announcement by SpaceX, now the Starship Flight 7 test will be conducted on Wednesday, 15th January instead of Monday the 13th Jan.
The announcement came 24 hours after the flight rehearsal test conducted on Friday. This test is also called a wet dress rehearsal because the ship and the rocket booster are filled with actual propellant used for flight that is Methane + Liquid Oxygen (MethaLOX) in the case of SpaceX Starship.
“Now targeting Wednesday, January 15 for the seventh flight test of Starship,” SpaceX announced the delay on its official X timeline. The delay announcement come after the final major test which is the wet dress rehearsal.
After this final test, SpaceX not only pushed the launch test two days ahead, Starship was also destacked. SpaceX unmounted Ship 33 from Booster 14. It is possible that the SpaceX engineering teams found out some issues during the wet dress rehearsal and they need a couple of days to fix them.
At first, everyone thought that the destacking of Flight 7 Starship was done for the installation of the flight termination system (FTS) but this does not seem to be the only reason. We might observe another wet dress rehearsal before Wednesday if SpaceX engineers are not satisfied that the ship meets the flight requirements.
Ship 33 Catch Pins
SpaceX has made many changes, improvements, and upgrades to Flight 7 Starship. This is done to perform additional experiments during launch, atmospheric reentry, and landing-catch of the rocket booster (Super Heavy Booster 14).
The upper stage Ship 33 prototype will conduct two major tests during its journey in space and re-entry. The deployment of 10 Starlink V2 simulators (dummy satellites) in space. And testing the new thermal heat shield tiles during reentry burn.
Future Starship upper-stage prototypes will be tested for a landing-catch by the launch tower like Flight 5 Super Heavy. To enable upper-stage Starship for a landing-catch, it needs catch pins like the 1st stage booster.
SpaceX has installed catch pins on the Ship 33 Flight 7 Starship. However, these pins are currently not structural and thus are not usable for a landing catch. Ship 33 pins are covered in heat shield tiles to measure the thermal endurance of the protruding pins during reentry burn (labled image below).
The physical condition and data gained from the reentry burn of the Ship 33 catch pins will be helpful for the development of future Starships and their ability to land after going through extreme atmospheric heat and friction.
Here’s a list of Starship Fight 7 objectives and experiments. Stay tuned for news, updates, and live coverage of Starship IFT-7 on Wednesday.
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Related SpaceX / Starship News
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- Static fire test of Flight 7 Starship pushes SpaceX one step closer to the launch
 by two days. Know the reasons behind the delay, Ship 33 catch pins, and more (report, video).){kind=link}