A frozen valve dashed Elon Musk’s hopes of sending his magnum opus rocket to space for the first time on Monday. Now his company, SpaceX, says it’s taking 72 hours to recycle and will aim to try sending Starship to orbit again on Thursday.
Starship is designed to be the most powerful rocket ever, which NASA plans to use for upcoming Artemis missions to the moon and Musk hopes to one day transport humans to Mars with.
But first the huge spacecraft has to leave Earth’s atmosphere for the first time with the help of a Super Heavy booster loaded with 33 of the company’s next generation Raptor engines.
This test flight has been in the works for nearly two years, since a series of high-altitude flights using a three-engine prototype of Starship sans Super Heavy concluded in mid-2021.
Much of that time was spent working through a lengthy environmental review and licensing process led by the Federal Aviation Administration, which finally concluded with a launch license being issued last Friday.
SpaceX immediately targeted the earliest possible launch attempt timeframe on Monday morning, but by late Sunday Musk was already cautioning that the mission was likely to be scrubbed, or called off for the day.
On Monday morning the prognosticating came true as winds and the valve problem led SpaceX to call off the launch attempt with less than ten minutes remaining in the countdown.
“Learned a lot today,” Musk would later summarize on Twitter.
For months now, Musk has warned that the orbital flight might not be a total success and might even end in an explosive ball of fire. However, SpaceX has invested significant capital into its launch infrastructure at Starbase in Texas, where liftoff will take place. An explosion damaging any of that ground infrastructure would be a setback for the company and its plans to move more of its launch services over to Starship.
So for now Musk and SpaceX are playing it a bit more cautious. The company said it needed at least 48 hours to recycle after the scrub, but later announced it would be waiting another day until Thursday to try again.
If all goes according to plan, the hope is that Super Heavy and Starship will blast off safely. The big first stage booster will then separate after a few minutes and splashdown into the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX is not expected to attempt to land Super Heavy on land at this time. Starship then continues on past the Karman Line and officially into the realm of space. The trip will be brief though and may not even involve a full trip around the planet before re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Pacific off the coast of Hawaii.
Currently, launch is expected to happen no earlier than 9:28 a.m. EDT on Thursday. The whole thing can be watched live on YouTube below.