SpaceX flight aborted: Elon Musk’s space company scrubs Starship’s flight seconds before liftoff; all you need to know

SpaceX's starship flight aborted

SpaceX's Starship rocket came within seconds of lifting off on its 13th test flight on Thursday, before an automated abort sequence halted the launch at Starbase, Texas, after several of the vehicle's engines failed to ignite. The company's livestream showed engine ignition beginning roughly three seconds before the scheduled 6:45pm ET liftoff, with on-screen data indicating four of the Super Heavy booster's 33 engines did not fire. The remaining 29 engines shut down immediately, keeping the 407-foot rocket anchored to the pad.

It marked the first time a full-scale Starship vehicle had experienced a last-second abort of this kind, according to SpaceX. Ground teams began draining propellant from the rocket shortly afterwards. Speaking on the company's launch webcast, SpaceX's Dan Huot said engineers would examine what triggered the abort once the booster began igniting, before determining the next steps. Elon Musk, the company's founder and chief executive, said via X that two engines would be replaced "to be confident of a good flight", adding that the most probable timing for another attempt was early the following week.

Thursday's scrub came during the second test of Starship Version 3, an upgraded variant of the rocket designed to bring it closer to operational readiness. The mission had been intended to deploy 20 mock Starlink satellites, attempt a targeted splashdown of the Super Heavy booster in the Gulf of Mexico, and send the Starship upper stage on a partial trip around the globe before a controlled splashdown off western Australia. The flight also aimed to relight one of the vehicle's Raptor engines in space, a maneuver abandoned during the previous test in May after an engine shut down prematurely.

The abort carries added significance given SpaceX's recent stock market debut in June, marking the first Starship launch attempt since the company began public trading. Shares fell more than 3 per cent in after-hours trading following the scrub, having already closed below their IPO price earlier in the day.

Starship's progress remains closely watched beyond investors. NASA is relying on a lunar-lander variant of the rocket for its Artemis programme, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon's surface as early as 2028. SpaceX has also positioned Starship, capable of carrying 100 metric tons to orbit, to eventually replace its Falcon 9 rocket as the company's primary launch vehicle, including for deploying larger batches of Starlink satellites.

While SpaceX has typically turned around launch attempts quickly following late-countdown issues, the company has not confirmed a firm new date. Attention now turns to whether engineers can identify and resolve the engine fault in time for an early-next-week attempt, as Musk indicated, and whether Flight 13 can achieve the objectives left unmet by May's Flight 12.

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