NEW DELHI— SpaceX called off the highly anticipated 10th test flight of its Starship rocket just minutes before liftoff on Sunday night, citing a problem with ground support systems at its Starbase facility in South Texas.
The launch was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. EDT, but the countdown was halted 17 minutes before the window closed. “Standing down from today’s tenth flight of Starship to allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems,” the company said in a post on X.
Although no new date has been confirmed, SpaceX has backup opportunities available through August 26. The delay adds to a series of setbacks for the world’s most powerful rocket, which has struggled to complete missions without major failures.
Starship has conducted nine test flights so far. The last three, flown earlier this year in January, March, and May, all ended in failure. Flights 7 and 8 exploded less than 10 minutes after launch, while Flight 9 disintegrated during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Ahead of Sunday’s planned flight, SpaceX said it had made both hardware and operational changes based on investigations into Flight 9’s loss and a separate static fire anomaly involving Ship 36. “After completing the investigations … hardware and operational changes have been made to increase reliability,” the company noted in a blog post.
Standing over 400 feet tall when stacked, Starship consists of the Super Heavy booster and an upper-stage spacecraft of the same name, both designed to be fully reusable. The rocket is central to SpaceX’s long-term vision of enabling human settlement on the Moon and Mars.
Starship is also slated to play a crucial role in NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2026. (Source: IANS)
