SpaceX halted a test flight of its powerful Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster on Thursday as the countdown clock ticked down to zero at the company’s South Texas spaceport.
The launch team at Starbase, Texas, just north of the US-Mexico border, aimed to lift off the more than 400-foot rocket at 5:45 p.m. local time (6:45 p.m. EDT; 10:45 p.m. UTC). The countdown continued smoothly throughout the day, culminating in the loading of more than 11.5 million pounds of liquid methane and liquid oxygen into the two-stage rocket.
But the computers controlling the countdown called a halt during the Super Heavy booster’s engine start-up sequence. SpaceX aborted the launch attempt and engineers began preparations to empty the rocket’s fuel tanks. Officials did not immediately say when they planned to try again.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, X wrote on the social media platform the company will not be able to start work during the next available opportunity on Thursday. “Some engines didn’t start and auto-start stopped,” Musk said. “Fueling now. Next launch attempt hopefully in a few days.”
Musk added late Thursday that ground crews at Starbase will replace two of the Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster. “The most likely launch time is early next week.”
Engine tuning
The Super Heavy booster features 33 methane-powered Raptor engines, each capable of generating more than half a million pounds of thrust. Designed to protect the launch vehicle from intense heat and vibration during liftoff of the world’s most powerful rocket, the engines are supposed to ignite in a sequential sequence after the launch pad’s water-cooled flamethrower fires.
SpaceX officials did not say how many engines fired during the ignition sequence, but a graph of the engine status on SpaceX’s live video stream shows that four of the 33 engines never ignited. The engines on this Starship and Super Heavy are from SpaceX’s third-generation Raptor design. This test flight – the 13th full-scale Starship launch – is the second using the Raptor 3 engine, flying on SpaceX’s upgraded Starship Version 3 rocket.
