SpaceX launch today was scrubbed after multiple holds in the final minute of the countdown, the company said, as teams exhausted available troubleshooting time.
Elon Musk wrote on X that the hydraulic pin holding the tower arm in place did not retract. The issue forced SpaceX to stand down from its first attempt to fly the third generation Starship on a suborbital test.
The two-stage vehicle for Flight 12 combines Super Heavy Booster 19 and Starship Ship 39. Booster 19 will not attempt a return to the pad, and is planned to splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico roughly seven minutes after liftoff, while Ship 39 will aim for a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean more than an hour after launch.
Flight 12 was to carry a suite of test payloads. SpaceX planned to release 20 Starlink simulator satellites on a suborbital arc over about a ten-minute window starting near 17 minutes into flight. Two modified Starlink satellites were to scan Ship 39’s heat shield and transmit imagery for analysis, and several tiles on Starship were painted white to serve as imaging targets simulating missing heat shield tiles.
Implications And Next Steps
SpaceX also planned an in-flight relight of a Raptor engine nearly 39 minutes into the mission to test future deorbit procedures. The engine demo is intended to inform methods for controlled return burns on later orbital missions.
As an introduction of a new block upgrade, the company did not intend to recover Booster 19 on this flight. SpaceX previously moved from Version 2 to Version 3 after extensive testing that included two separate explosive setbacks on the test stand that destroyed a Super Heavy booster and a Starship.
In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, SpaceX said it has invested more than $15 billion in Starship development. The filing also reported a loss from operations and other financial figures related to research and development funding for the next-generation vehicle, and stated that Version 3 is expected to eventually carry 100 metric tons or more of payload to orbit.
SpaceX indicated that if the hydraulic issue could be fixed overnight, another launch attempt would be possible the following day, and that a subsequent flight could be the company’s first orbital launch with the new version if Flight 12 proceeds as planned.
