SpaceX has canceled the 10th test flight of its Starship spacecraft just moments before lift-off.
“Standing down from today's tenth flight of Starship to allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems,” the company said in a statement, News.Az reports, citing ABC News.
The Starship test was set to launch from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas. The stainless-steel spacecraft, designed to be fully reusable and capable of carrying up to 100 people to deep space destinations, has yet to complete a successful mission.
This marks the latest setback in SpaceX’s Starship program. In mid-June, a Starship exploded on the launch pad during a pre-flight engine test. Previously, test flight nine ended prematurely when the spacecraft suffered a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” due to mechanical failures minutes into the flight.
During that same test, the first-stage heavy booster was lost after apparently exploding while splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX cited “higher than predicted forces on the booster structure” as the cause.
Starship’s development continues to be closely watched as the company works toward its goal of making deep-space travel a reality.
