The most powerful rocket built to date hit the brakes on a planned launch Monday. SpaceX opted to delay shooting Starship into orbit after engineers struggled to nail down a pressurization issue.
“Standing down from today’s flight test attempt,” SpaceX tweeted Monday morning. “Team is working towards next available opportunity.”
SpaceX owner Elon Musk added that the team was offloading fuel and plans to try again in “a few days.”
SpaceX announced it would scrub Monday’s launch plans minutes before its vessel was to circle the planet and then land in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii. Musk hopes the ship will someday deliver a human crew to Mars.
“One day, Starship will take us to Mars,” he tweeted in February.
Musk hinted in March 2022 that could happen before the end of the decade by replying to a tweet prompting people to guess what year humans would land on Mars with, “2029.”
The FAA cleared SpaceX’s unmanned test run to move forward in Cameron County, Texas before the weekend began. SpaceX will determine when its mighty 394 foot-tall rocket, which is capable of carrying more than 330,000 reusable lbs., fires up its 33 engines again. CNN said it will take at least 48 hours for Starship to refuel the mix of propane liquid and oxygen required to get the rocket off the ground. That process is called a “recycle.”
NASA SLS launched the unmanned Artemis 1 — the most powerful rocket to date — in November. NASA called that achievement the beginning of a “series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration to the Moon and Mars.”
The SLS rocket produced 8.8 million pounds of thrust to propel the rocket from its Kennedy Space Center launchpad in Florida. Starship will nearly double that firepower.