SpaceX abruptly aborted the second launch attempt of its upgraded Starship rocket system on Thursday, moments after the booster ignited at the company’s complex in South Texas.
Elon Musk, CEO saying on their social media platform X that “[s]”Some of the engines did not start, causing an automatic launch abort” and that the company will replace two of them. SpaceX will not attempt to launch Starship again until next week, he said. wrote.
SpaceX had hoped to launch its first third-generation Starlink satellites into space, although they are supposed to burn up about 20 minutes after deployment, as Starship has not yet demonstrated the ability to reach Earth orbit.
This is also SpaceX’s first Starship test launch attempt since it was made public on June 12 at the largest IPO in history. The company raised more than $85 billion in the transaction and briefly touched the valuations of Amazon and Microsoft, although its shares have fallen steadily over the past month.
On Thursday, SpaceX’s stock price closed below its initial public offering price of $135. Its shares sank more than 4% in after-hours trading after the aborted launch.
SpaceX was attempting to return to flight just weeks after the first launch of Starship V3 in May. That mission was a mix of things.
Leaving the launch pad with the first version of a newly upgraded rocket was a huge step forward and the company was able to deploy several Starlink simulators into space. But the Super Heavy booster stage suffered a failure before it could attempt a simulated landing in the Gulf of Mexico, leading to an FAA-ordered review of what went wrong. (The FAA cleared the company to fly Starship again earlier this week after identifying a number of causes and solutions for the booster failure.)
Starship’s upper stage also lost an engine on its way to deploy the Starlink simulators during the May mission. The upper stage was able to perform its own simulated landing on water without problems.
SpaceX hoped to take it a step further on Thursday with the launch of the V3 Starlink satellites. The upgraded Starship and Starlink are key to SpaceX’s incredibly ambitious plans to prove that the concept of “orbital data centers” is technologically and economically viable. Starlink is also the largest revenue generator and the only profitable part of SpaceX’s business.
Thursday’s launch attempt appeared to be progressing well, with only a brief pause in the countdown at T-minus a minute before the scheduled launch attempt. That wait quickly dissipated and the countdown resumed.
As the countdown expired, the launch pad’s water deluge system came on and the booster stage visibly began firing its engines, only for everything to suddenly shut down. The graphics on the SpaceX broadcast appeared to show that four of the company’s new Raptor engines It did not fire when turned on.
SpaceX now has to remove all the propellant from both the Super Heavy booster and the upper stage, before determining exactly what went wrong on Thursday.
This story has been updated with new information from Elon Musk.
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