STARBASE, TexasA beehive of aerospace technicians, construction workers, and spaceflight fans descended on South Texas this weekend in advance of the next test flight of SpaceX's gigantic Starship rocket, the largest vehicle of its kind ever built.
Towering 404 feet (123.1 meters) tall, the rocket was supposed to lift off during a one-hour launch window beginning at 6:30 pm CDT (7:30 pm EDT; 23:30 UTC) Sunday. But SpaceX called off the launch attempt about an hour before liftoff to investigate a ground system issue at Starbase, located a few miles north of the US-Mexico border.
SpaceX didn't immediately confirm when it might try again to launch Starship, but it could happen as soon as Monday evening at the same time.
It will take about 66 minutes for the rocket to travel from the launch pad in Texas to a splashdown zone in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia. You can watch the test flight live on SpaceX's official website. We've also embedded a live stream from Spaceflight Now and LabPadre below.
This will be the 10th full-scale test flight of Starship and its Super Heavy booster stage. It's the fourth flight of an upgraded version of Starship conceived as a stepping stone to a more reliable, heavier-duty version of the rocket designed to carry up to 150 metric tons, or some 330,000 pounds, of cargo to pretty much anywhere in the inner part of our Solar System.
But this iteration of Starship, known as Block 2 or Version 2, has been anything but reliable. After reeling off a series of increasingly successful flights last year with the first-generation Starship and Super Heavy booster, SpaceX has encountered repeated setbacks since debuting Starship Version 2 in January.
