SpaceX called off Thursday's planned test flight of its Starship rocket and Super Heavy booster at Starbase, Texas, after the countdown's automated systems detected that some of the booster's Raptor engines failed to ignite. The abort triggered automatically as the countdown reached zero, forcing engineers to drain the rocket's propellant before any launch could take place. This is the second attempt to fly the upgraded Starship Version 3 alongside the newer Raptor 3 engines, and the scrub highlights ongoing reliability challenges with the booster's ignition sequence that SpaceX had hoped to resolve after problems on the previous flight.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said on X that engine ignition failures triggered the abort, and that ground crews would replace two Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster before trying again, most likely early the following week. Although SpaceX did not confirm exact figures, live stream data suggested four of the booster's 33 engines failed to start. The mission, the 13th full Starship test flight, was meant to demonstrate fixes to the engine startup sequence and booster flip manoeuvre following issues on the previous flight two months earlier, including a booster that failed to complete a controlled splashdown and an upper-stage engine that shut down mid-flight.