Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship rocket never made it off the ground for its scheduled tenth test flight Sunday night before issues with the ground systems interfered — spoiling the company’s hopes for its first successful touchdown of the year.
The 400-foot-tall Starship was supposed to take off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas at around 7:30 p.m.
The rocket was loaded and ready with its props and propellants before preparations started to slow and the highly anticipated livestream was stalled.
The livestream was first pushed back 15 minutes and not long after, SpaceX threw in the towel and announced that it would be postponing Sunday’s flight to “allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems,” it wrote on X.
It’s unclear when Sunday’s flight will be rescheduled.
The Starship program has already seen three consecutive failures earlier this year.
Sunday’s flight, cleared by the Federal Aviation Administration, followed the last test in May that saw the Starship rocket burn up as it plunged back into the Earth’s atmosphere.
The May test came after Starship’s eighth and seventh tests, which both resulted in the rocket exploding over the Atlantic Ocean, with the burning debris filmed soaring over the Caribbean.
The company also saw a setback on June 18 when one of the rockets suddenly exploded into an enormous fireball during a routine test.
Previous issues SpaceX identified that contributed to the numerous explosions include failures on the rockets’ main fuel tank and payload bay.
Other tests, much like Sunday’s, were stalled due to unresolved issues identified during test runs.
The Starship rocket is designed to be fully and rapidly reusable, saving SpaceX significantly on cost and resources, which would aid the company in reaching its ultimate goal of pioneering travel to the Moon and Mars.
While NASA is working towards reaching Mars through its Artemis program, Musk is also eyeing interests on the Red Planet with loose plans to launch uncrewed trips as early as 2028.
SpaceX was tapped to assist with the space agency’s upcoming Artemis 3 mission to return to the Moon in 2027.
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