SpaceX targets Friday Starship launch after tower glitch scrubbed attempt

SpaceX was targeting Friday evening for Starship’s 12th test flight after a tower-and-ground-system problem scrubbed Thursday’s attempt in the final seconds of the countdown. The countdown had already reached about T-minus 40 seconds when the launch was called off, after reports that a pin holding the tower arm in place failed to retract.

The retry mattered because this was not just another launch slip. It was the first flight of Starship V3, SpaceX’s third-generation Starship and Super Heavy system, powered by Raptor 3 engines and launching from an entirely new pad at Starbase in southern Texas. SpaceX’s own materials have described the vehicle as a step up in capability, with upgraded Super Heavy hardware that includes fewer but larger grid fins, a change aimed at making the booster more capable as the company pushes toward more demanding missions.

The launch window opened at 5:30 p.m. Central time, or 6:30 p.m. Eastern time, and SpaceX said its live webcast would begin about 45 minutes before liftoff. Forecasts were favorable, with one report citing an 85 percent chance of good conditions, but the bigger measure of success was always going to be whether the system performed cleanly from the pad through the early flight sequence. For SpaceX, a launch that merely clears the tower would be only the first checkpoint in a much longer test of reliability.

That is the real program-maturity test now facing Starship. NASA is counting on the vehicle for future Artemis moon missions, and SpaceX has pitched the newest version as part of a broader lunar and Mars strategy. Earlier Starship flights have tried progressively more ambitious feats, including booster catches by the launch tower arms in October 2024. The next standard is higher still: a vehicle, tower and ground system that can repeat complex operations without last-second scrubs, since those are the milestones that matter for NASA’s confidence and for SpaceX’s business case as a reusable heavy-lift launcher.

If Starship V3 flies successfully, the most important question will not be whether it left the pad, but whether the new hardware, the new pad and the tower system all worked together as intended. That is what will determine whether Starship is becoming an operational transport system or remains a program that is still proving the basics one test at a time.