SpaceX abruptly aborts second Starship V3 launch after ignition

SpaceX abruptly aborted the second attempted launch of its upgraded Starship rocket system on Thursday, just moments after the booster ignited at the company’s complex in South Texas. CEO Elon Musk said on his social media platform X that “[s]ome of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort” and that the company will replace two of them. SpaceX won’t try to launch Starship again until next week, he wrote.

SpaceX was hoping to launch its first third-generation Starlink satellites into space — although they are supposed to burn up around 20 minutes after deployment, as Starship has not yet demonstrated the ability to reach Earth orbit. This is also SpaceX’s first Starship test launch attempt since it went public on June 12 in the largest IPO in history. The company raised more than $85 billion in the transaction and briefly touched the valuations of Amazon and Microsoft, though its stock has steadily fallen over the intervening month. On Thursday, SpaceX’s stock price closed below its IPO price of $135. Its stock sank more than 4% in after-hours trading after the aborted launch.

SpaceX was trying to return to flight just a few weeks after the first-ever launch of Starship V3 in May. That mission was a mixed bag: getting off the launchpad was a big step, and the company deployed several Starlink simulators into space, but the Super Heavy booster suffered a failure before a simulated landing in the Gulf of Mexico, leading to an FAA-ordered review. (The FAA cleared the company to fly again earlier this week after identifying causes and fixes.) The upper stage also lost an engine during the deployment but completed its own simulated landing successfully.

Thursday’s launch attempt initially progressed smoothly, with only a brief hold at T-minus one minute. That hold cleared, and the countdown resumed. As it expired, the water deluge system activated and the booster visibly began firing its engines — only for everything to suddenly shut down. Graphics on SpaceX’s broadcast appeared to show that four of the company’s new Raptor engines did not fire. SpaceX now must remove all propellant from both stages and determine exactly what went wrong.