Bad news for aerospace fans. The launch of Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever created, has been postponed due to technical problems. The liftoff of the SpaceX spacecraft, owned by Elon Musk, was planned for 8.20 AM EDT (3.20 PM in Spain), but had to be cancelled at the last minute.
“A pressurizer valve appears to be frozen, so unless it starts working soon, there will be no launch today,” Musk said on his Twitter account, when engineers still did not know whether or not to delay liftoff. Thus, this titanic 119-meter rocket will have to remain parked at the Starbase complex in Boca Chica (Texas).
Shortly before Starship lifted off, SpaceX’s chief engineer, John Insprucker, communicated the following in the live broadcast on YouTube: “The decision right now is that we are going to stop the launch for today”. The engineer explained that the decision was made to cancel liftoff after detecting a pressurization problem while refueling the space rocket.
Starship consists of two stages. On the one hand, there is Super Heavy, a powerful 70-meter-high booster composed of 33 Raptor engines. On the other hand, we have the Starship module, 49 meters high, and whose purpose (in the future) will be to transport people and the rocket’s own cargo.
The two stages of the spacecraft are completely reusable, since both can be lowered to Earth, recovered and put back into orbit once they have been properly checked and repaired, something that takes time. In today’s case, after the cancellation of liftoff, Starship will need at least 48 hours to be overhauled (“recycled”), so its launch will not take place until Wednesday afternoon at the earliest.
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