SpaceX aborts launch of its largest-ever rocket

News, US April 18, 2023 , by IRIA No Comments

American space company SpaceX was forced to abort the launch of its largest-ever Starship rocket minutes before its scheduled flight on April 17, 2023. SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk tweeted that a “pressurant valve” on the rocket appeared to be frozen.

The company has announced that the rocket launch would take place as soon as the issue is resolved. The launch was scheduled to take place on the morning of April 17, from SpaceX’s private spaceport, Starbase, in southern Texas.

Starship is SpaceX’s largest rocket, standing at 120 meters high. The Starship rocket is about 10 meters taller than the Saturn V, the rocket that was used to send the first human crew to the moon by NASA in 1969. In comparison, SpaceX’s most used rocket, Falcon 9, stands 70 meters tall.

The rocket system contains 33 main engines, the number of engines in any rocket booster ever. Together these 33 engines would produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust.

With a test such as this, success is measured by how much we can learn, which will inform and improve the probability of success in the future as SpaceX rapidly advances development of Starship pic.twitter.com/2tf4jx3qRL
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 17, 2023

The upper portion of the Starship has been named Super Heavy, which is a rocket booster meant to provide the Starship with the terminal velocity a the time of launch. The test flight for the rocket was set to last for 90 minutes. The spacecraft would continue eastward, passing over the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans before splashing down in waters near the US state of Hawaii.

Starship has been designed to be fully reusable, however, the rocket for the test flight would not be used in future projects.

The current launch of Starship contains no human crew; however, SpaceX plans to use the rocket to put astronauts back on the moon in the future. The company is under a $3 billion contract with NASA, hoping to land astronauts on the moon using the spacecraft in 2025. This would be the first astronaut lunar landing in over 50 years.

*^{SpaceX fully stacked Starship rocket ahead of its flight test from Starbase. (Image Credit: Twitter/@elonmusk)}*

Before the launch was postponed, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appealed to everyone to keep expectations low, as the rocket was still in its testing phase and it is not uncommon for space missions to be postponed.

“It’s the first launch of a very complicated, gigantic rocket, so it might not launch. We’re going to be very careful, and if we see anything that gives us concern, we will postpone the launch,” he said in Twitter Spaces before the launch.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX became the first privately owned corporation to send astronauts into space as in 2020 it ferried NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on Falcon 9, the world’s first orbital-class, reusable rocket.