“We’ll take some time, dig into what triggered that abort once the booster was igniting to launch, and then we’ll figure out what our path forward is going to be,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot said during the company’s launch webcast today.<\/p>\n
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SpaceX’s second V3 Starship vehicle tries to launch on July 16, 2026. The attempt was aborted at the last second. (Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n
It didn’t take long for SpaceX to narrow in on the root cause and address it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n “To be confident of a good flight, 2 Raptors will be removed & replaced. Most probable launch timing is early next week,” company founder and CEO Elon Musk<\/a> said this evening via X<\/a>, the social media platform he owns.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Starship Flight 13<\/a> will fly from SpaceX’s Starbase site in South Texas. Today’s attempt occurred at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT; 5:45 p.m. local time), right at the beginning of a 90-minute launch window.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Flight 13 will be the second test launch of Starship Version 3 (V3), an upgraded variant of the megarocket designed to get it up to operational status.<\/p>\n V3’s first jaunt, Flight 12 on May 22<\/a>, was mostly successful, but there were a few issues. For example, Starship’s Super Heavy first stage didn’t steer itself back for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico as planned, and the Ship upper stage wasn’t able to relight one of its Raptor engines in space.<\/p>\n Starship V3 will get a second chance on Flight 13, whose goals are similar to those of Flight 12: Get Super Heavy down on target in the Gulf and send Ship most of the way around the world, for a controlled splashdown of its own off the coast of Western Australia. (Ship pulled that off on Flight 12.)<\/p>\n There are a few new objectives, however.<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n The most notable is the payload suite flying on Flight 13 \u2014 20 of SpaceX’s next-gen Starlink V3 internet satellites. The company wants to build a constellation of 100,000 Starlink V3 spacecraft<\/a> in low Earth orbit using Starship, and Flight 13 will mark the satellites’ first-ever trip to space.<\/p>\n![\"Space\"](\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/media\/img\/spc-logo-w.svg\"){kind=logo}
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