SpaceX stands down from 2nd attempt to launch Starship after months of failure

We’ve wrapped up our live coverage of SpaceX’s scrubbed launch attempt. Scroll through the posts below to catch up.

While nothing is certain, SpaceX’s Dan Huot mentioned before the livestream concluded that he believed there was a “very good chance” that the Starship rocket could make another liftoff attempt tomorrow.

According to air traffic notices, SpaceX does have clearance to try again on Tuesday between 7:15 p.m. and 9:34 p.m. ET.

For now, however, SpaceX says that its logistics team is still working to confirm exactly when the next takeoff attempt will be.

SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft atop the Super Heavy rocket booster Monday.

The Starship rocket will stay on the launchpad tonight, though engineers will continue running through the countdown until there’s 10 seconds left on the clock. They’re essentially treating this as a dress rehearsal at this point — but cloudy skies will prevent takeoff.

“Weather got in our way,” said SpaceX’s Dan Huot.

Earlier, Huot said the skies had some clouds that violated SpaceX’s “anvil rule.”

(Rockets often avoid clouds because flying through one that is electrified can actually trigger a lightening strike, as the Apollo 12 astronauts discovered firsthand.)

SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket booster in Starbase, Texas, on Monday.

The countdown clock has stopped — but the show is not over yet.

There’s 40 seconds left on the clock, and SpaceX is just halting it in the hopes that some bad weather moves out of the area.

While there is some wiggle room because SpaceX’s launch window doesn’t close until 9:30 p.m. ET, the rocket can’t stay on the pad full of super-chilled fuel for long.

“So we have to keep a close eye on things like temperatures inside the tanks. We can only hold for so many minutes before the things start to warm up,” said SpaceX’s Dan Huot.

One of the most interesting goals SpaceX has planned for today’s test flight: an attempt to deploy eight satellite “simulators” from the Starship spacecraft.

The company had hoped to test out how Starship would accomplish such a task during Flight 7 in January, Flight 8 in March and Flight 9 in May. But the first two missions exploded before they could conduct the experiment and the third was thwarted by a technical issue that caused SpaceX to forgo the test.

SpaceX said the satellite simulators used on today’s flight will be “similar in size” to the company’s next generation of Starlink internet satellites, helping the company to hash out how Starship may take over launch tasks from Falcon 9, SpaceX’s workhorse rockets.

Because Starship is not equipped with a nose cone, or payload fairing, as most other rockets are, the satellites will need to be ejected from a special hatch.

But this is all just a test.

The satellite simulators will not stay in space. Instead, they’ll travel on a suborbital path, much like the Starship spacecraft itself, which is slated to splash down in the Indian Ocean about one hour after takeoff.

For NASA’s Artemis III mission — which aims to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since the Apollo era — Starship may need to dock with more than a dozen fuel tankers in Earth’s orbit before continuing its mission to the lunar surface.

That’s because Starship is so massive that it must burn through most of its fuel at launch simply getting to orbit, leaving little left for making the trek out to the moon.

Demonstrating the ability to launch a Starship into orbit and then rendezvous the spacecraft with a tanker carrying fuel is considered essential to the success of NASA’s Artemis program.

While Starship is still in the early stages of development, the company has not made as much headway in figuring out the rocket’s design this year as once hoped.

Notably, government regulators said this last year: “In 2025, SpaceX plans to undertake a long-duration flight test and a propellant transfer flight test,” according to a 2024 report from NASA’s Office of the Inspector General, or OIG.

That hasn’t happened. And Musk just confirmed on tonight’s livestream that SpaceX will not actually attempt to tackle that feat until next year.

He sought to convey how unique it would be: “No one has ever demonstrated propellant transfer.”

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, center, joins the livestream Monday alongside Dan Huot and Bill Riley.

The official webcast of tonight’s launch just kicked off. Hosting the broadcast is Dan Huot, a company spokesperson who formerly worked in NASA communications.

“We’ve been dodging around some weather that is currently the biggest threat to the launch today, as we’re at about 70% probability of violations of liftoff,” Huot said.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is also joining the livestream. In typical Musk fashion, he began by explaining why he has long been obsessed with getting Starship to work. (As he has said for years, Starship is the vehicle that he envisions will help establish a permanent human settlement on Mars.)

“It’s always important to explain the why of things, and the why of Starship is that we want to be a multi-planet species,” Musk said.

Joining Musk and Huot is Bill Riley, SpaceX’s vice president of Starship engineering. Riley spoke to how rapidly the company’s operations in South Texas have expanded.

“We’ve been… seeing the site evolve from a double wide trailer and a tent — where we built a Starhopper,” he said, referring to the earliest prototype of Starship, “to the first suborbital test flights.

“And now we have behind us two towers for the first time, as we build towards the first operational flight from the second tower at the end of this year,” Riley said, pointing out a second launchpad the company is building just down the road from the one it’s currently using.

The building SpaceX is broadcasting from is also a brand-new 1-million-square-foot factory.

Birds gather near the SpaceX launchpad at Starbase, near Brownsville, Texas, on June 5.

In May, SpaceX insisted that it had found “no evidence of any floating or deceased marine life that would signal (rocket) booster debris impact harmed animals in the vicinity” of the crash site in the waters off the Gulf Coast.

The company has also separately said that Starship launches present “no hazards to the surrounding communities in the Rio Grande Valley.”

“Previous independent tests conducted on materials inside Starship, including toxicity analyses, confirm they pose no chemical, biological, or toxicological risks,” the company has stated.

But not everyone is convinced or appeased by SpaceX’s assertions.

There’s no question that the copmany’s presence in South Texas is formidable. SpaceX’s operations now span miles of roadways, have frequently shut down beach access, and the noise and debris associated with Starship’s explosive failures have rankled environmentalists.

Experts in the US are concerned about the sonic booms, which can be as violent as a small earthquake. Local activists are concerned about migratory birds that have long relied on the area, including the snowy plover, a species that’s rapidly declined, according to environmentalists.

And an NGO in Mexico has documented melted plastics, aluminum and pieces of blue adhesive strewn across the sands of Tamaulipas’ Bagdad beach, spurring concerns about threats to wildlife such as Kemp’s ridley turtles, an endangered species.

“There is vegetation that the last explosion burned, the entire edge of the Rio Bravo, and the pipes broke many trees, which fell near a small population of people,” said Jesús Elías Ibarra, founder of Conibio Global.

Launch controllers just gave the green light to begin loading the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket booster with fuel.

That’s a good indication that launch controllers believe weather is looking good, and engineers aren’t tracking any major issues with the vehicle.

Together, Starship and Super Heavy can hold more than 10 million pounds of liquid oxygen and methane.

Propellant loading of the Starship will end about three and a half minutes before takeoff, and Super Heavy will get its last top off at just under three minutes until the countdown clock strikes zero.

SpaceX has added a countdown clock to its website — a new piece of transparency that offers insight into exactly when engineers are aiming to launch the mission.

But, as is frequently the case for rocket launches, the exact takeoff time can change. SpaceX may add time to the countdown clock or even halt it entirely depending on a variety of factors, including dicey weather forecasts and technical issues that require more time to resolve.

Currently, SpaceX is targeting 7:59 p.m. ET for liftoff, according to the company’s clock.

That of course could change. CNN is awaiting confirmation that ground controllers have given the green light to begin loading the rocket up with fuel. That decision is typically made about one hour and 15 minutes before launch.

Technicians conduct work on Starship as SpaceX prepares for the launch attempt near Brownsville, Texas, on Monday.

After kicking off 2025 with two test flights that ended in explosions mere minutes into the missions, SpaceX appeared to be making new strides during Starship’s last showing in May.

The vehicle made it farther in its flight path, reaching near orbital speeds and spending roughly 30 minutes in space before SpaceX confirmed the vehicle started spinning out of control.

In a technical brief posted to its website last week, SpaceX said it believes that the root cause of the issue was abnormally high pressure that built up in the nose cone — or tip — of the Starship spacecraft.

That was likely caused by “a failure on the main fuel tank pressurization system diffuser,” SpaceX said. That’s a component that is designed to ensure that propellant moves safely from one place to another, spraying it in a diffuse manner rather than allowing a flood of fuel to begin sloshing or creating turbulence.

SpaceX engineers were able to replicate the issue during ground tests, the company said, and it was fixed by implementing a redesigned diffuser that should “substantially decrease the strain on the (fuel tank) structure.”

Conibio Global stages a peaceful protest against the SpaceX Starship launch attempt near Brownsville, Texas, on Sunday.

SpaceX said its attempt to get Starship off the ground Sunday was thwarted by issues with the company’s ground systems or launchpad.

But environmental activists and local residents who staged a peaceful protest said they were pleased with their efforts regardless of what prompted the delay.

The demonstrators took to small boats in the Gulf waters to make their presence known with flags featuring sea turtles and the words “Operación Golfo de México.” The event was organized by Conibio Global, an NGO based in Mexico that has vocally opposed SpaceX’s impact on the local ecosystem.

Elías Ibarra, founder of the NGO, told CNN that they spotted the presence of two helicopters during the demonstration, but at no point were they asked to leave. The group had previously stated in a post on social media that “the peaceful activation will take place outside the risk zone.”

The Federal Aviation Administration could not immediately provide information about the helicopters spotted by the activists.

Ships and boats routinely cause issues for rocket launches at Starbase and elsewhere. Prior to liftoff, vessels must be out of pre-determined keep-out zones for safety reasons. But that restricted area is sometimes breached — unintentionally or otherwise — by nearby boasts.

These breaches have also been an issue for SpaceX’s Starship during some of its previous launch attempts, though it’s unclear whether any protesters triggered those delays.

But on Sunday, activists and media outlets were present in the nearby Gulf Coast waters and beaches. (The activists noted they did not believe they had encroached on any keep-out zones.)

SpaceX's Starship is shown here prepared for launch as the Beaver moon rises near Brownsville, Texas, on November 15, 2024.

At the end of 2024, SpaceX was on a high, having soared through three consecutive test flights that concluded with Starship making a controlled splashdown.

But this year, SpaceX debuted a new generation of Starship — which has a 25% larger fuel tank, new avionics and upgraded flight computers compared with the version that flew last year.

And this new iteration has hit one snag after another.

Its first flight test in January ended with an explosion less than 10 minutes into the mission, showering debris over the populated archipelago of Turks and Caicos, where residents found truckloads of rocket detritus on roadways and beaches. A car was also struck with debris.

A similar fate awaited the next flight in March, with debris washing up in the Bahamas. And while the test flight in May displayed marked improvement, with Starship making it all the way through its engine burn, the vehicle ultimately lost control due to pressurization issues and was destroyed during reentry.

While SpaceX has always made the case that it’s going for progress — not perfection — it is possible the company will retire the current generation of Starship vehicles before one ever conducts a pristine flight test.

“Two flights remain with the current generation, each with test objectives designed to expand the envelope on vehicle capabilities,” according to the company blog post.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has already been teasing plans for larger, more ambitious iterations of the vehicle that would stretch even taller.

Even if every technical component falls into place, rockets still need a favorable forecast to take flight.

Conditions for yesterday’s launch attempt proved dicey with thunderstorms rolling through the area near SpaceX’s launch site on the southernmost tip of Texas, and the company gave about a 45% chance of weather holding up for liftoff.

Today is slightly better: SpaceX is forecasting a 55% chance of good conditions.

Mother nature did not ultimately prove to be the hangup on Sunday night. SpaceX called off liftoff because of a “Ground side liquid oxygen leak.” (Liquid oxygen is one of the propellants Starship uses.)

CNN meteorologist Taylor Ward reports that — while it is still possible for a storm to roll through the area this evening — the systems look pretty isolated today, with most activity skewing toward earlier in the afternoon.

“Surface winds are relatively light too. So launch window looks pretty decent,” Ward said.

Spectators watch from the dunes as SpaceX prepares to launch Starship near Brownsville, Texas, on Monday.

This test flight comes after a trying seven-month stretch for SpaceX, during which four of its Starship prototypes — all part of a new generation of vehicles that debuted in January — were lost in explosive failures.

Today, the company will be seeking a bit of redemption, aiming to improve upon the prior missions by getting the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket booster to lift off safely before conducting controlled landings in the ocean.

SpaceX says it has made adjustments to the vehicle that will fly today in the hopes it will avoid the fate of its recent predecessors. But either way, the company is expecting to soon retire this version of Starship as it looks to build an even larger version of the craft.

The goal today — as SpaceX always states is the aim for Starship test flights — is to gather data, pushing the vehicle to its limits to determine what is and isn’t possible. The company is not necessarily looking for perfection.

Here’s a quick look at what’s ahead: