SpaceX cancels the first Starship V3 launch just before liftoff

SpaceX has canceled the first launch of its third-generation Starship rocket system from its headquarters in Starbase, Texas. The company is expected to make another attempt on Friday.

It’s a crucial launch for the company — and not just because it’s the first real test of the upgraded Starship V3 hardware; It also comes at a pivotal moment for SpaceX financially. The company recently filed to go public and is expected to go public within weeks, increasing pressure on SpaceX to prove that its next-generation rocket program is making meaningful progress.

This launch – Starship’s 12th – will be the first Starship flight since the company’s last attempt in October 2025. SpaceX has spent the interim months working to develop and test this third version of Starship, which has encountered some problems. In November, for example, one of the first V3 boosters experienced an explosion during testing.

The company postponed its Thursday launch several times and eventually tried to send the rocket into space near the end of the expected launch window. The spacecraft and its massive rocket booster were fully fueled, and the countdown dropped to less than T-40 seconds, but problems with the various rocket systems and launch pad caused the company to repeat the countdown cycle several times.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a post on the X website, “The hydraulic pin that holds [launch] The tower arm that is in place has not retracted,” he said, adding that the company would try again on Friday at 5:30 p.m. local time if the problem could be fixed “tonight.”

This new version of Starship represents a huge upgrade in vehicle design and how the company’s launch pad infrastructure works. One of the biggest changes was SpaceX’s third-generation Raptor engines, which brought increased thrust to the streamlined design. The third-generation Starship booster is supposed to be easier for the launch tower to catch and has a lower mesh fin.

SpaceX has also made a number of changes that should make this version of Starship more reliable. For example, the new design is supposed to prevent propellant leaks from accumulating within certain sections of the spacecraft’s upper stage — which has caused problems in several previous test flights of the spacecraft. The goal is to make the entire vehicle completely reusable, similar to the company’s working rocket, the Falcon 9.

This particular flight, if it goes as planned, will not achieve all of the goals SpaceX has set to prove the effectiveness of Starship V3. The company is not trying to recover the booster or the Starship itself. Both are expected to make a “soft landing” in water – the booster in the Atlantic Ocean, and the spacecraft in the Indian Ocean. Starship also won’t fly in true Earth orbit, which means SpaceX will still have to wait another mission or two to prove that the upper stage of this massive rocket is capable of delivering commercial payloads.

SpaceX needs Starship V3 to become a more reliable launch system because the company made a big bet on Starlink, which generated $11 billion in revenue last year, according to the company’s IPO filing now. SpaceX has demonstrated Starship’s ability to deploy mock versions of upgraded Starlink satellites in previous launches, but has yet to put a working payload into space using the new rocket system.