SpaceX Delays Starship Megarocket Launch After Ground System Glitch
SpaceX has postponed the latest test flight of its colossal Starship rocket, pushing the launch back by at least 24 hours after engineers discovered a leak in the ground-side liquid oxygen system, the latest setback in Elon Musk’s quest to build the world’s most powerful launch vehicle.
The tenth test flight of the 403-foot (123-meter) megarocket had been scheduled for 6:30 p.m. local time (2330 GMT) on Sunday, but the countdown was halted just 15 minutes before liftoff.
SpaceX later confirmed it was “standing down” to troubleshoot the issue, with a new attempt penciled in for Monday evening — though it warned timing remained “dynamic and likely to change.” Local road closures also suggest Tuesday could serve as a backup window.
Musk himself acknowledged the problem on X, writing: “Ground side liquid oxygen leak needs to be fixed.”
The planned one-hour mission was set to put Starship’s upper stage through a series of trials before its massive booster splashed down in the Indian Ocean. Unlike earlier flights, SpaceX did not plan to attempt catching the booster with its giant “chopstick” launch tower arms.
Starship is central to Musk’s long-term vision of making humanity multiplanetary, while NASA is betting on a modified version to return astronauts to the Moon. But so far, its testing campaign has been plagued with fiery setbacks.
The rocket’s upper stage — designed to carry crew and cargo — has exploded during all three of its previous flights this year. Two failures scattered debris across Caribbean islands, while a third reached space before breaking apart. In June, yet another upper stage detonated during a ground “static fire” test.
Despite these setbacks, SpaceX has successfully demonstrated some milestones, including catching the booster stage with launch tower arms on three occasions. Still, the company has yet to deliver a payload into orbit with Starship or return its upper stage intact.
The repeated failures are beginning to weigh on SpaceX’s reputation.
“I think there is a lot of pressure on this mission,” said Dallas Kasaboski, an analyst at Analysys Mason. “We’ve had so many tests and it hasn’t proven itself reliable — the successes have not exceeded the failures.”
Others are more critical. Former engineer Will Lockett, writing on Substack, argued that the inability to reach orbit suggests “the concept of Starship is fundamentally flawed.”
Even so, Musk — who has staked SpaceX’s future on retiring its successful Falcon rockets in favor of Starship — shows no sign of retreat.
The company has adopted a “fail fast, learn fast” ethos that has propelled it to dominance in global launches.
But with Starship, the scale of the technical challenge is far greater: the rocket must prove it can be fully reusable, refuel in orbit with super-cooled propellant, and eventually carry humans on deep-space missions.
For now, SpaceX presses ahead, accelerating its testing pace despite mounting scrutiny from regulators and environmental groups concerned about the ecological impact of repeated launch failures along the Gulf Coast.
