SpaceX aborts Starship launch seconds before liftoff after engine failure

Washington,UPDATED: Jul 17, 2026 05:22 IST

SpaceX’s Starship rocket came within about a second of lifting off on a test flight before several engines failed to start, forcing the company to abort the launch. The rocket, billed as the world’s biggest and most powerful, was due to make its 13th flight on a space-skimming journey halfway around the world.

The setback means SpaceX must determine what went wrong before trying again. The planned mission also carried 20 of the company’s newest Starlink internet satellites, while NASA is counting on Starship as part of its plans to return astronauts to the moon in the next few years.

SpaceX’s launch webcast on Thursday showed engine ignition beginning three seconds before the planned liftoff, as seen from a drone above the launch pad. But the engines that did fire shut down abruptly, and the rocket remained fixed to the pad. The launch team then immediately began draining fuel from the rocket.

Elon Musk later said on X, “Next launch attempt hopefully in a few days.” Until the partial engine ignition, everything had been going SpaceX’s way, including the weather.

During the planned hour-long flight, the 20 Starlinks on board were to be released and would have tried to communicate with Starlinks already in orbit while also taking pictures of Starship’s heat shield. Neither the first-stage booster nor the spacecraft was meant to be recovered, with both expected to end up in the sea.

NASA has hired both SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to build and fly the lunar landers that would take astronauts back to the moon after an absence of more than half a century. The two companies are expected to have their landers — Starship and Blue Moon — ready by next year so the newly named Artemis III crew can practise docking their capsule with them in orbit around Earth. The mission after that, Artemis IV, planned no earlier than 2028, would use one of those landers to carry two astronauts to the moon’s south polar region.

In summary, Starship’s latest test flight was halted at the launch pad after a partial engine ignition, delaying a mission that was meant to advance both SpaceX’s satellite plans and NASA’s future moon programme.

With PTI Inputs

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