After three catastrophic in-flight failures in a row, SpaceX readied a huge Super Heavy-Starship rocket for launch Sunday evening from the Texas Gulf Coast to put a variety of upgrades to the test and to deliberately stress the vehicle to learn more about its capabilities. Test flight No. 10 was expected to get underway at 7:30 p.m. ET from SpaceX's Starbase flight and manufacturing facility and the team was in the process of pumping liquid oxygen and methane fuel into the 40-story-tall rocket when the company announced a scrub. "Standing down from today's tenth flight of Starship to allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems," the company saidon X. SpaceX laterannounced that another hour-long launch window would openat 7:30 p.m. EDT Monday. The flight plan had called for the 30-foot wide, 230-foot tall Super Heavy booster, generating more than 16 million pounds of thrust, to propel the Starship out of the dense lower atmosphere before it would fall away, flip around and head back toward the coast. During three of the nine previous test flights, the booster flew itself all the way back to its launch pad where giant mechanical arms on the service gantry plucked the descending rocket out of midair. This time around, because of the planned tests, the Super Heavy was expected to descend to splashdown in the Gulf, but it never took off. SpaceX previously said the primary objectives for the booster test was focused on its landing burn. One of the three center engines used for the final phase of landing was going to be "intentionally disabled to gather data on the ability for a backup engine from the middle ring to complete a landing burn," the company said on its website. The booster was then going to use two engines toward the end of the descent and hover briefly before dropping to the Gulf. The 160-foot-tall Starship, meanwhile, powered by six Raptor engines of its own, would have headed for a suborbital trajectory carrying it halfway around the world before a belly-first reentry, a flip back to vertical and a rocket-powered descent to splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Along with deploying eight Starlink simulator satellites, the Starship's flight computer had planned to attempt a variety of other tests, including an in-space engine restart, to verify the performance of numerous upgrades implemented in the wake of the most recent test flight failures. Working the bugs out of the giant launcher is critical to SpaceX and founder Elon Musk, who designed the ultra-heavy-lift rocket to launch thousands of next-generation Starlinks and other satellites in Earth's orbit and to one day carry settlers and equipment to Mars. The rocket also is critical to NASA, which is paying SpaceX more than $3 billion to develop a modified version of the Starship upper stage to carry Artemis astronauts to the surface of the moon in 2027. But that flight will require 10 to 20 Super Heavy-Starship flights just to refuel the "Human Landing System," or HLS, lander before it can head to the moon. Transferring thousands of gallons of super-cold liquid nitrogen and oxygen in space has never been attempted. And it is still not known how SpaceX plans to control propellant temperatures to minimize the amount that will naturally warm up and turn into a gas, which must be vented overboard. SpaceX has provided no details. Musk promised pre-launch update Sunday on the company's plans going forward, but the talk was also canceled with no explanation. Given the number of flights that must be successfully executed to demonstrate the reliability NASA will expect, the 2027 target date for the Artemis 3 moon landing is considered unrealistic, if not impossible to meet, by many aerospace observers. China plans to launch its own astronauts on the moon by 2030. It is unclear at this point whether NASA and SpaceX will get back to the moon using the Starship lander before the Chinese plant their own flag on the lunar surface. Given the sheer size and power of the Super Heavy-Starship — it has more than twice the thrust of NASA's current Space Launch System, or SLS, moon rocket — technical problems during development were not unexpected. But given the short time between now and NASA's first planned Artemis moon landing, the problems have clearly set the program back and cast doubt on the overall mission architecture, especially the requirement for 10 to 20 problem-free flights in short order just to fuel the lander for its flight to the moon. The first three test flights of the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage in 2023 and 2024 ended in catastrophic failures with both stages destroyed, either while still attached to each other or after separation. The fourth flight in June 2024 was generally successful with the Super Heavy flying itself back to a controlled splashdown in the Gulf while the Starship followed the planned sub-orbital trajectory to splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The ship's fins were damaged by reentry heating, but otherwise worked as required. The fifth flight in October 2024 was highlighted by a successful Super Heavy return to the launch pad gantry where giant mechanical arms snagged the rocket in mid air. The Starship, meanwhile, managed a second controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean although it again suffered fin damage during reentry. During the sixth integrated flight test in November 2024, the Super Heavy attempted another return to the launch site but it was diverted to a Gulf splashdown because of launch damage to critical sensors in the pad's capture mechanism. The Starship again flew itself to a controlled Indian Ocean splashdown with minimal flap damage. But the next three flights, in January, March and May of this year, ended with catastrophic failures. Two Super Heavy boosters successfully returned to the launch site, but the most recent broke up over the Gulf while testing a high angle-of-attack entry. All three Starships were destroyed after catastrophic malfunctions, including two propellant leaks, an on-board fire and multiple engine failures. In addition to the flight record, another Starship was destroyed on the ground when a high-pressure nitrogen tank exploded during an engine test firing at the Starbase launch site. Rainbow crosswalks in Florida painted over Welcome to New Orleans Maryland Gov. Wes Moore calls Trump D.C. National Guard deployment "unconstitutional"
