With Starship, SpaceX encounters an obstacle that haunted NASA’s space shuttles
Ars Technica » Scientific Method 2025-08-26
STARBASE, Texas—For the third day in a row, SpaceX engineers prepared to send the company's massive Starship rocket into space Tuesday after a technical problem and bad weather grounded the test flight on two previous launch attempts.
The one-hour launch window opens at 6:30 pm CDT (7:30 pm EDT; 23:30 UTC) at SpaceX's sprawling rocket development site in South Texas, just a couple of miles north of the mouth of the Rio Grande River at the US-Mexico border.
SpaceX called off a launch attempt Sunday after detecting a leak in the plumbing that flows super-cold liquid oxygen propellant into the rocket. Technicians fixed the problem in time for another countdown 24 hours later, but the risk of lightning in the area prevented Starship from lifting off Monday evening.