SpaceX stands down from Starship test flight

SpaceX will have to wait another day to launch its massive Starship rocket. During the launch countdown, the team detected a pressurization issue in the rocket’s first stage. 

SpaceX decided to pivot during the countdown and treat this as another wet dress rehearsal, opting to scrub the launch and try to fly again another day. These types of wet dress tests are crucial to launches, as they provide valuable data that engineers can use to help ensure the rocket’s first flight goes as smoothly as possible.

Roughly two months ago, SpaceX completed its first static fire of the fully integrated Starship, which consists of two major components: a massive first-stage booster called the “Super Heavy” and an upper stage known as “Starship.” In typical SpaceX fashion, both components of the craft are designed to be fully reusable.

Unlike Falcon 9, which is powered by nine kerosene-fueled engines, Starship is powered by 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines on the first stage, plus six additional engines on its upper stage. During testing, 31 of the 33 engines fired successfully, and SpaceX said that some of those were replaced with new ones ahead of Monday’s flight attempt.

SpaceX first announced its plan to build the massive Starship in 2015, and has spent the intervening years designing, building and mostly blowing up prototypes at its Texas-based facilities.

In 2020, the company proved that a short, squatty version of its Starship, called Starhopper, could fly. Resembling more of a water tower than a spaceship, the craft launched, hovered and then landed back at the company’s facilities in south Texas. 

Following this success, SpaceX began the arduous process of building and testing the actual version of the rocket that would fly. Only one of those tests was a complete success, which was enough to give SpaceX hope that this massive rocket might actually fly. 

Starships’s orbital flight test is a crucial milestone in its development.

SpaceX has big plans for its mega rocket: Jared Issacman will lead a crewed mission as part of the Polaris program, and the company has two lunar flights booked so far with Japanese billionaire Yusaka Mazezawa leading the first and Denis Tito and his wife, Akiko, on the second flight.

But that’s not all: in 2021, NASA selected Starship as its human landing system — a key component of the agency’s Artemis lunar program. Thanks to a contract secured in 2021, SpaceX will provide a version of its Starship to use as a vehicle to transport NASA astronauts from a lunar outpost called Gateway to the surface of the moon.

But first, Starship has to get off the ground. 

Following Monday’s scrub, SpaceX officials said they would need at least 48 hours before they could try to launch again, but so far, the next attempt has not been officially set yet.