SpaceX, the aerospace firm led by billionaire Elon Musk, was forced to call off the much-anticipated 10th test flight of its massive Starship rocket late Sunday evening. The company cited a ground systems malfunction that emerged just minutes before liftoff.
The launch was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. EDT from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas. But with just 17 minutes remaining in the countdown, the mission was postponed. “Standing down from today’s tenth flight of Starship to allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems,” the company confirmed in a post on X.
Although no fresh launch date has been declared, SpaceX has reserved backup windows until August 26. Still, the abrupt halt adds to a series of recent setbacks for Starship, the world’s largest and most powerful rocket designed to enable future missions to the Moon and Mars.
To date, nine test flights have been conducted. The last three attempts—in January, March, and May—each faced major failures. Flights 7 and 8 ended in explosions less than ten minutes after liftoff, while Flight 9 disintegrated during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
SpaceX explained in a blog update that Flight 10 incorporated lessons learned from earlier mishaps. The company said it had addressed issues identified in the Flight 9 loss and the Ship 36 static fire anomaly, introducing both hardware and operational improvements to boost reliability.
When stacked, Starship stands more than 400 feet tall and is composed of two fully reusable stages: the Super Heavy booster and the Starship spacecraft. Musk has called the vehicle a cornerstone for humanity’s long-term space exploration plans, with ambitions to return astronauts to the Moon and eventually establish human settlements on Mars.
Starship is slated to play a critical role in NASA’s Artemis 3 program, which aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface by 2026. While the latest delay represents another hurdle, SpaceX insists the rocket is advancing steadily toward operational readiness.
The cancellation underscores the immense engineering challenges involved in building the most powerful spacecraft ever created. Despite repeated setbacks, SpaceX remains determined to transform Starship into a workhorse for future deep-space missions.
