Starship — the spacecraft that Elon Musk says will one day take people to Mars — will try another day to carry out its eighth test flight.
This trip to space, which had been scheduled for Monday night, was to be largely a do-over of the seventh flight, which launched in January. In that test, Starship’s mammoth booster, or the bottom of the rocket, successfully returned to the launchpad, but the upper-stage spacecraft disintegrated over the Caribbean, with some debris landing on the Turks and Caicos Islands.
But an issue with the second-stage spacecraft, resulted in the postponement of Monday’s launch attempt from the company’s South Texas launchpad. During the livestream, SpaceX commentators did not offer details about what caused the launch to be called off.
In a posting on X, Mr. Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX said there were “too many question marks about this flight” and cited low pressure in one particular system.
He added that it was best to take the rocket off the launchpad, inspect it “and try again in a day or two.”
What is Starship?
The Starship rocket system is the largest ever built. At 403 feet tall, it’s nearly 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty atop its pedestal.
