Technical problems on the launch pad cause SpaceX’s Starship flight to be postponed

Starship did not launch today, 17 July, during the night in Italia. It was the thirteenth test flight, but something went wrong – literally at the very last second of the countdown, just as the engines were about to fire up. The rocket remained on the ground, and the problem was identified immediately: ‘To ensure a successful flight, two Raptor engines will be removed and replaced. The launch is scheduled for early next week,” Elon Musk announced in real time on X. We’ll have to wait and see, including how the stock market reacts today.

The test flight of Starship by SpaceX has been postponed until at least next week following the interruption of the launch procedure. The rocket, which was due to launch overnight, was preparing to take off from Texas when some of its engines failed to ignite. As not all 33 engines ignited, the automatic launch system aborted the operation amid thick clouds of smoke and vapour.

The CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, has stated that a new attempt to send Starship on a suborbital flight (skimming the edge of space) will most likely take place early next week. At 124 metres tall, Starship is the world’s largest rocket.

NASA is counting on Starship to land its astronauts on the Moon. The space agency has, in fact, commissioned SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to build and launch the lunar landing modules that will return humankind to the Moon’s surface after an absence of over half a century.

Both companies will need to have their landing modules – Starship and Blue Moon – ready for flight by next year, so that the crew of the newly named Artemis III mission can practise docking their capsule with them whilst in Earth orbit. The next mission – Artemis IV, scheduled for no earlier than 2028 – would use one of those landing modules to take two astronauts to the lunar south pole region.