SpaceX was set to perform another test of the world’s most powerful rocket last night, but the launch was scrubbed in the final minute before takeoff. Now the eighth test flight of the Starship will have to wait for at least a day as engineers check on problems with the rocket.
Starship was scheduled to blast off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas at 6:30 p.m. ET (3:30 p.m. PT) on Monday, March 3, and the rocket was fueled and on the pad ready for takeoff. But the countdown clock was paused at T-40 seconds, and SpaceX said there were issues that could involve both the first stage (aka the Super Heavy booster) and the upper stage (aka the Ship).
The company has not given details on what the issue was, but it did write in an update, “Standing down from today’s flight test attempt. The Starship team is determining the next best available opportunity to fly.”
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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also wrote on X that there were “[t]oo many question marks about this flight” and that ground control saw “20 bar low on ground spin start pressure.” He wrote that they would destack the rocket (that is, remove the upper stage from the lower stage), inspect both stages, then try the test flight again “in a day or two.”
The launch had already been delayed from its originally scheduled date of Friday, February 28. The previous Starship test, flight number seven, saw the rocket explode in the air with pieces of debris crashing to Earth and some flights having to be diverted. This version of the Starship has extensive upgrades from previous versions which have completed the test flights successfully including catching of the Super Heavy booster. But this new configuration has yet to complete its planned mission of flying a suborbital trajectory and deploying test payloads, as well as the tricky re-entry procedure.
SpaceX has shared details of the issue which caused the explosion of the seventh test flight, saying that vibrating rhythmic oscillations caused propellant leaks, with propellant building up in the back of the spacecraft in an area called the “attic” which then caught fire. To address this issue, the version of Starship to be used for the eighth test has new propellant feed lines which should withstand oscillations and better venting of the attic to prevent buildup of propellant there.
A new time and date for the eighth test flight has not yet been announced.