{"id":439768,"date":"2026-05-22T09:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T09:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/439768\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T09:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T09:10:08","slug":"spacexs-attempt-to-launch-bigger-starship-hits-last-minute-snag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/439768\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX&#8217;s attempt to launch bigger Starship hits last-minute snag"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SpaceX got within a half-minute of launching its newest and biggest Starship in a test flight on Friday before a cascade of problems halted the countdown.<\/p>\n<p>The 124m rocket was poised to begin a space-skimming journey from Texas extending halfway around the world. But issues cropped up with the brand-new pad at Starbase near the Mexican border, and the company ran out of time.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX CEO Elon Musk later said the hydraulic pin holding the launch tower&#8217;s arm in place did not retract. If the problem can be fixed quickly, another launch attempt will be made Saturday, he noted.<\/p>\n<p>Friday&#8217;s launch attempt came one day after Musk announced that his rocket company would be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.1news.co.nz\/2026\/05\/22\/spacex-unveils-what-could-be-biggest-ever-initial-public-offering\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">going public<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Starship holds 20 mock Starlink satellites to be released before the spacecraft&#8217;s controlled entry into the Indian Ocean at the end of the hourlong flight. It will be the 12th test flight for a Starship and the first since last autumn.<\/p>\n<p>NASA is relying on this latest version of Starship to land astronauts on the moon in a few years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SpaceX got within a half-minute of launching its newest and biggest Starship in a test flight on Friday&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-439768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}