SpaceX suddenly aborts second Starship V3 launch after ignition

On Thursday, SpaceX’s stock price closed below its IPO price of $135. Its stock sank more than 4% in after-hours trading after the aborted launch.

SpaceX was trying to return to flight just a few weeks after the first-ever launch of Starship V3 in May. That mission was a mixed bag.

Getting off the launch pad with the first version of a newly-upgraded rocket was a big step forward, and the company was able to deploy a number of Starlink simulators into space. But the Super Heavy booster stage suffered a failure before it could attempt a simulated landing in the Gulf of Mexico, leading to an FAA-ordered review of what went wrong. (The FAA cleared the company to fly Starship again earlier this week after identifying a number of causes and fixes for the booster failure.)

Starship’s upper stage also lost an engine on its way to deploying the Starlink simulators during the May mission. The upper stage was able to perform its own simulated landing over the water without a hitch.

SpaceX was hoping to take another step forward with Thursday’s by launching the V3 Starlink satellites. The upgraded Starship and Starlink are key to SpaceX’s incredibly ambitious plans to prove that the concept of “orbital data centers” is both technologically and economically viable. Starlink is also the largest revenue generator and only profitable portion of SpaceX’s business.

Thursday’s launch attempt looked to be chugging along just fine, with only a brief hold in the countdown at one minute out from the scheduled launch attempt. That hold cleared quickly, and the countdown resumed.

As the countdown expired, the launchpad’s water deluge system fired up, and the booster stage visibly began firing its engines — only for everything to suddenly shut down. Graphics on SpaceX’s broadcast appear to have shown that four of the company’s new Raptor engines did not fire upon igntion.

SpaceX now has to take all the propellant out of both the Super Heavy booster and the upper stage, before determining exactly what went wrong on Thursday.