&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Is Musk's dream rocket cursed? Space X scrubs megarocket Starship's 10th test amid string of explosions and failures")
Elon Musk's SpaceX hit pause on its latest Starship test flight Sunday (Aug 24), scrubbing the much-hyped launch just minutes before liftoff, saying it had things to troubleshoot. The cancellation marked yet another setback for Elon Musk's giant rocket — the one he insists will one day carry people to the Moon and eventually Mars. The 403-foot behemoth was supposed to blast off from Starbase in Texas at 6:30 pm local time (2330 GMT) for its tenth test flight. Musk himself had teased the launch an hour earlier, posting "Starship 10 launching tonight" on X. But despite the rocket already being fuelled, SpaceX abruptly called it off just 15 minutes before launch.
Why was the SpaceX launch cancelled?
On X, the space company said, "Standing down from today's tenth flight of Starship to allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems". However, it did not elaborate on what issue it needed to troubleshoot.
For now, the cancelled launch could be rescheduled as early as Monday or Tuesday, according to local road closure notices near Starbase.
SpaceX's string of failures grows
The latest delay piles onto a string of high-profile failures. Starship's upper stage has exploded in all three of its test flights this year, with debris falling over Caribbean islands in two cases and one stage breaking apart after reaching space. Another blew up on the ground during a June static fire test. So far, the rocket hasn't managed to deliver a payload to orbit or return its upper stage intact.
That's a problem, because Starship isn't just Musk's passion project — NASA is banking on a version of it to land astronauts on the Moon.
Starship: Humanity's dream of reaching Mars
US President Donald Trump's former DOGE chief Elon Musk, as per AFP, has pegged SpaceX's entire future to the entirely reusable rocket, planning to eventually phase out the workhorse Falcon rockets in favour of Starship.
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Despite the setbacks, SpaceX is sticking to its "fail fast, learn fast" approach, pushing ahead with test after test. The company has managed to successfully catch Starship's massive lower stage booster with "chopstick" launch tower arms three times.
Still, critics are starting to wonder if Musk's most ambitious gamble is wobbling."I think there is a lot of pressure on this mission," space analyst Dallas Kasaboski told AFP. "We've had so many tests and it hasn't proven itself reliable -- the successes have not exceeded the failures." Others, like Will Lockett, a former engineer turned commentator, have gone further, questioning whether the whole Starship concept is "fundamentally flawed".
