BOCA CHICA (AP) – SpaceX\u2019s mega Starship rocket came within a second or so from blasting off on a test flight Thursday, but some of the engines failed to ignite, triggering a launch abort amid billowing clouds of smoke and vapor.<\/p>\n
Elon Musk, the company\u2019s founder and CEO, said two engines will be replaced \u201cto be confident of a good flight\u201d before sending Starship from Texas on a space-skimming journey halfway around the world. It will be the 13th flight for Starship, which at 407 feet (124 meters) tall with 33 main engines is the world\u2019s biggest and most powerful rocket.<\/p>\n
SpaceX\u2019s launch webcast showed the start of engine ignition three seconds before the planned liftoff, viewed from a drone high above the pad. Although the company did not elaborate, onscreen data showed four engines not firing, with the remaining 29 engines immediately shutting down and keeping the rocket anchored to the pad. It was the first time a full-scale Starship experienced a last-second abort like this.<\/p>\n
The launch team immediately began draining the fuel from the rocket.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost probable launch timing is early next week,\u201d Musk said via X.<\/p>\n
Everything was going SpaceX\u2019s way, even the weather, until the partial engine ignition. In the end, the rocket\u2019s automatic launch system worked as planned by halting everything. Too few operating engines could have doomed the launch. Some earlier Starship flights ended in explosive fireballs.<\/p>\n
Elon Musk\u2019s company had newest, most advanced Starlinks aboard<\/strong><\/p>\n Twenty of SpaceX\u2019s newest and most advanced Starlinks were on board Starship for release during the planned hourlong flight from Starbase, the company\u2019s hub near the Texas-Mexico border. The internet satellites were going to try communicating with Starlinks already in orbit while taking photos of Starship\u2019s heat shield.<\/p>\n Neither the first-stage booster nor spacecraft were meant to be recovered, with both ending up in the sea.<\/p>\n The rocket\u2019s automatic launch system worked as planned by halting everything. Too few operating engines could have resulted in a failed launch. Some earlier Starship flights, for example, ended in explosive fireballs. NASA is counting on Starship to land its astronauts on the moon in the next few years. The space agency has hired SpaceX and Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin to build and fly the lunar landers that will return humanity to the surface of the moon after an absence of more than half a century.<\/p>\n Both companies need to have their landers \u2014 Starship and Blue Moon \u2014 ready to fly by next year so that the newly named Artemis III crew can practice docking their capsule with them in orbit around Earth. The mission after that \u2014 Artemis IV planned for no earlier than 2028 \u2014 would use one of those landers to take two astronauts to the moon\u2019s south polar region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BOCA CHICA (AP) – SpaceX\u2019s mega Starship rocket came within a second or so from blasting off on a test flight Thursday, but some of the engines failed to ignite, triggering a launch abort amid billowing clouds of smoke and vapor. Elon Musk, the company\u2019s founder and CEO, said two engines will be replaced \u201cto … Continue reading SpaceX Starship launch aborted on the pad at the last moment<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1525529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-19 13:10:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1525529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1525530,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525529\/revisions\/1525530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1525529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1525529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1525529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWorld\u2019s biggest rocket is key to putting astronauts back on the moon<\/strong><\/p>\n