SpaceX announced it will be delaying Starship Flight 7 due to poor weather in the area. They are not the only ones dealing with weather concerns this week either. Starship is now set to launch no earlier than January 16 at 4:00 p.m. CT.
Update: Starship Flight 7: SpaceX makes second booster catch, Block 2 Starship loss during ascent
January has been the month of hurrying up and waiting for two highly anticipated missions. First is Starship Flight 7 with its Block 2 upgrade and first attempt at deploying a payload. Second is Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, which will be its debut and a big step forward in Blue Origin launch operations.
Both have had to contend with the weather, although New Glenn experienced a technical delay Monday morning. The past week down in Starbase has been full of rain and fog, making it difficult for those who stream the happenings of the facility to see much. However, SpaceX has been able to get the rocket stacked once more and complete a dress rehearsal before launch.
In what was a bold move in the confidence of Starship’s resilience, SpaceX moved Ship 33 from the manufacturing facility to the launch site in the pouring rain. While it still doesn’t seem like SpaceX wants to launch in poor weather, for many safety and mission success reasons that’s good, it seems that they don’t mind leaving their rockets out in the elements for long periods of time.
Important when they’re designed to be left on Mars for years and are extremely reliable in all conditions for rapid launches. Maybe one day SpaceX will find a way to launch in a storm, as that would really dampen the company’s long-term cadence if they had to pause for every storm that came through.
In the present world, the weather has delayed Starship Flight 7 to Thursday afternoon, with another backup date on Friday if needed. SpaceX has a one-hour launch window that opens at 4:00 P.M. CT.
Blue Origin needs good weather too
Across the Gulf of Mexico, Blue Origin is also running into weather concerns. While Monday morning’s launch was scrubbed due to a freezing purge line, Tuesday morning’s launch was delayed because of poor weather at the launch site.
According to Space Launch Delta 45, their weather report gives Blue Origin a 60% chance of violating launch weather constraints. This doesn’t include a moderate chance of poor downrange recovery weather.
While recovering New Glenn’s first stage is not a priority for this mission, Blue Origin is still attempting to give the booster the best chance it can to make it happen, showing how important a reusable first stage from the start is to them.
Meanwhile, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 around the same time as a potential New Glenn launch window Wednesday morning, with nearly perfect weather both at the pad and downrange. I’m sure Blue Origin would have loved to have that day available to launch on.
For now, we just have to sit around and wait for good weather to open up for either launch to take place.
