SpaceX founder Elon Musk wrote in the short message service Twitter that a valve was apparently frozen. “It will be at least 48 hours before we can attempt this test flight again,” said a SpaceX employee.
The US aerospace company SpaceX has canceled the eagerly awaited first test flight of its giant Starship rocket at the last minute. The reason was a technical problem with pressure equalization on the most powerful space rocket ever built, as SpaceX representatives said on Monday during the live broadcast of the planned launch. SpaceX founder Elon Musk wrote in the short message service Twitter that a valve was apparently frozen.
“It will be at least 48 hours before we can attempt this test flight again,” a SpaceX employee said. This means that the next start attempt will be on Wednesday at the earliest.
“Very risky flight”
The 120 meter high rocket was supposed to have lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas on Monday. The launch was stopped less than ten minutes before the countdown ended.
Musk had previously spoken of a “very risky flight”. After the test flight was cancelled, the technology billionaire wrote on Twitter that SpaceX “learned a lot today”. “We’ll try again in a few days.”
Starship consists of a 70 meter high rocket called Super Heavy and a 50 meter long space shuttle with additional engines. The US space agency NASA has selected Starship to fly humans to the moon again for the first time in more than 50 years on the Artemis 3 mission at the end of 2025. Even flights to Mars should be possible with the rocket. In February, almost all of the rocket’s engines were successfully fired for the first time during a test at the rocket base.