BOCA CHICA BEACH, Texas — A booster issue forced SpaceX to scrub its eighth flight test of its Starship that will eventually send humans to the moon.

SpaceX did not state what the issue was, but at the T-40 mark of the countdown, there was a hold, and engineers eventually determined to the launch was a no go.

SpaceX did not immediately state when the next launch attempt would be.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: During the eighth test of Starship, SpaceX plans to deploy Starlink satellite simulators while attempting to catch the Super Heavy booster for a third time.

The famed 397-foot-tall (121 meter) Starship will be launched from the company’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, on Monday, SpaceX stated.

The one-hour launch window opens at 6:30 p.m. ET for the suborbital test flight. SpaceX pushed the launch to 6:45 p.m. ET.

Super Heavy is the rocket booster part of the vehicle, while the spacecraft is called Starship. When they are stacked together, they are known as Starship.

Starship is scheduled to send people back to the moon during the Artemis III.

After the liftoff and stage separation, the Super Heavy booster is expected to be caught by the launch tower’s metal arms, which have been called chopsticks.

Sonic booms will likely be heard during the catch attempt.

Starship’s flight test history

Starship’s first launch attempt happened in April 2023 and saw a series of failures that caused the rocket to blow up.

Months later, the second test forced SpaceX to active the self-destruct feature on Starship. The new stage separation, called hot stage separation, worked as designed, but it caused the rocket’s annihilation.

For the fourth test in June 2024, extra thrusters were added to Starship to avoid it from rolling, which lead to its forerunner’s destruction in the third test.

During the fifth test in October 2024, the chopsticks caught the Starship's rocket booster for the first time.

However, during the sixth test in November 2024, that did not happen and SpaceX was forced to do a controlled splashdown of the booster in the Gulf of America. Starship itself performed well. 

For the seventh test flight in January of this year, SpaceX lost all communications with Starship's upper stage after it was able to catch the ship's massive rocket booster in the launch pad’s chopsticks.

After Starship's upper stage communications were lost, SpaceX's safety system was trigged automatically causing the upper stage to explode over the Turks and Caicos Islands.

SpaceX provided a full summary of flight seven.

The FAA grounded SpaceX’s Starship a few days later. On Wednesday, Feb. 26, the FAA issued two statements.

The first being that after a comprehensive safety review, the agency determined that Starship is allowed to take flight again.

The second statement is that SpaceX met all the safety and environmental requirements for the suborbital test flight of the eighth test.

What to expect for #8

For the eighth flight, Starship will deploy four Starlink satellite simulators. This will be the first time that Starship will have a satellite deployment mission, even though these are not actual Starlink satellites.

These simulators are expected to burn up on re-entry.

SpaceX owns the Starlink company.

The California-based company mentioned some of the new tests it will conduct during flight eight.

The flight test includes several experiments focused on enabling Starship’s upper stage to return to the launch site. A significant number of tiles have been removed from Starship to stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle. Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, will test alternative materials for protecting Starship during reentry. On the sides of the vehicle, non-structural versions of Starship’s catch fittings are installed to test the fittings’ thermal performance, along with a section of the tile line receiving a smoothed and tapered edge to address hot spots observed during reentry on Starship’s sixth flight test. Starship’s reentry profile is designed to intentionally stress the structural limits of the upper stage’s rear flaps while at the point of maximum entry dynamic pressure.

The Starship is expected to splashdown in the Indian Ocean, west of Australia.

The booster has its own upgrades, like avionics, a more powerful flight computer, improved network and power distribution and smart batteries.