“Next launch attempt hopefully in a few days,” Elon Musk announced via X.
came within a second or so from blasting off on a test flight Thursday but some of the engines failed to start, triggering a launch abort.
Elon Musk’s company said it will have to figure out what went wrong before making another attempt to send Starship on a space-skimming flight halfway around the world. It was supposed to be the 13th flight for Starship, which at 407 feet tall with 33 main engines is the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket. Smoke and flames shoot out from underneath SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship seconds before its launch was aborted in Starbase, Texas, on July 16, 2026.
SpaceX’s launch webcast showed the start of engine ignition three seconds before the planned liftoff, viewed from a drone high above the pad. The launch team immediately began draining the fuel from the rocket. Twenty of SpaceX’s newest and most advanced Starlinks were on board Starship for release during the planned hourlong flight. The internet satellites were going to try communicating with Starlinks already in orbit while taking photos of Starship’s heat shield.
A boat passes in front of the viewing area for the SpaceX launch as smoke shoots out from the launch pad near South Padre Island, Texas. Neither the first-stage booster nor spacecraft were meant to be recovered, with both ending up in the sea. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to build and fly the lunar landers that will return humanity to the surface of the moon after an absence of more than half a century.
Both companies need to have their landers — Starship and Blue Moon — ready to fly by next year so that the newly named Artemis III crew can practice docking their capsule with them in orbit around Earth. The mission after that — Artemis IV planned for no earlier than 2028 — would use one of those landers to take two astronauts to the moon’s south polar region.
Smoke and flames shoot out from underneath SpaceX's mega rocket Starship seconds before its launch was aborted in Starbase, Texas, on July 16, 2026. A boat passes in front of the viewing area for the SpaceX launch as smoke shoots out from the launch pad near South Padre Island, Texas.
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