SpaceX on Monday morning postponed the launch of the world’s largest rocket ship.
This launch was meant to be the rocket ship’s, dubbed Starship, first integrated flight test.
SpaceX champions Starship as the world’s most powerful launch vehicle, able to carry 150 tons of reusable material and 250 tons of nonreusable. This rocket stands a total of 394 feet tall.
The first stage of this rocket system, dubbed super heavy, was meant to reenter the atmosphere upon launch and land at the launch site, while the starship itself would land in the Pacific Ocean upon reentry.
Scientists designed this rocket to transport cargo and humans to orbit other celestial bodies such as the moon, Mars, and “beyond.”
Starship was designed to carry up to 100 crew members for extended interplanetary flights and to aid in the development of a moon base.
“Starship is also capable of point-to-point transport on Earth, enabling travel to anywhere in the world in one hour or less,” said SpaceX officials on their website.
NASA has already begun preparations for missions like this, debuting its simulated environment for Mars, and revealing the crew for its Artemis II mission, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
The spacecraft arrived at its launch pad at 12:53 p.m. UK time and was scheduled to depart at 2:20 p.m., according to The Telegraph. A delay was deemed possible at 2:06 p.m. as personnel dealt with an issue with pressurization, with the delay being made official at 2:16 p.m.
SpaceX officials announced minutes after that the launch would be postponed with 40 seconds left on the clock.
“The flight director is talking about the issue we have had on first stage,” said John Insprucker, SpaceX principal engineer on a livestream of the event. “The decision right now is that we are going to stop the launch for today, transition the launch to a wet dress rehearsal,” he continued.
SpaceX owner Elon Musk announced on Twitter that the launch was in jeopardy due to a pressure valve and that without its function, the launch would not occur.
“Standing down from today’s flight test attempt; team is working towards next available opportunity,” said SpaceX officials in a tweet.
Musk issued another statement after the launch was aborted.
“Learned a lot today, now offloading propellant, retrying in a few days …” said Musk in a tweet on Monday.
