Weather Scrubs Second Starship IFT-10 Launch Attempt

SpaceX is still trying to get its 10th Starship Integrated Flight Test, IFT-10, off the ground.  Yesterday’s attempt was canceled because of a ground-side liquid oxygen leak. Today’s was scrubbed because of a stubborn anvil cloud that wouldn’t move away from the launch site before the launch window closed. SpaceX might try again tomorrow. Elon Musk made a surprise appearance on the launch webcast sharing his views on the need for a multiplanetary species, but offering no new insights on when Starship might be ready to land humans on the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program.

Whenever it lifts off, a lot is riding on IFT-10 after three failures in January (IFT-7), March (IFT-8), and May (IFT-9), plus the explosion of a Starship during a static fire test in June.

IFT-10 is intended to accomplish several demonstrations that weren’t completed on the previous flights including Starship’s first payload deployment of simulated Starlink satellites and heat shield tests during reentry.

Starship (or “ship”) is the winged vehicle that sits atop the Super Heavy rocket (or “booster”) although the combination is also called Starship.

The Super Heavy booster is reusable and on three occasions (IFT-5, IFT-7, and IFT-8) returned to the launch site and was caught by mechanical arms called “chopsticks,” an extremely impressive accomplishment.

Mechazilla has caught the Super Heavy booster! pic.twitter.com/JFeJSdnQ5x

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 6, 2025

On the last flight, IFT-9, in May, SpaceX chose instead to use the booster, the first to be reused, for tests and directed it to make a soft landing in the Gulf. Unfortunately, the IFT-9 booster exploded before it reached the water because as part of the test SpaceX flew it at a higher angle of attack. That increased forces on the fuel transfer tube, causing a structural failure.

For IFT-10, SpaceX will test various engine configurations during the landing sequence ending with a hover over the ocean’s surface before shutdown and dropping into the Gulf.

Starship also is designed to be reusable, but that hasn’t been demonstrated. In fact, Starship has not yet attempted to reach orbit.  All of these test flights are suborbital. The flight path calls for them to fly about three-quarters of the way around the globe and land in the Indian Ocean near Australia.

That didn’t happen on the last three flights. IFT-7 in January and IFT-8 in March exploded over the Caribbean. May’s IFT-9 got further, but still met an early end because a main fuel tank pressurization system diffuser failed. SpaceX explained that after separating from the booster, all six Starship Raptor engines lit, but sensors in the nose cone soon detected an increase in methane levels. The engines are powered by super-cooled liquid methane and liquid oxygen (methalox).  Starship’s systems attempted to compensate, but nose cone venting resulted in attitude errors leading to other adverse consequences and eventually automatic passivation commands were triggered, venting all the remaining propellant. Communications were lost 46 minutes into the flight at 36 miles (59 kilometers) altitude where Starship broke apart.

SpaceX is hoping to avoid those problems on IFT-10, but first the weather has to cooperate.

Musk’s appearance on the SpaceX webcast tonight was a surprise. The company had promised a “technical update” yesterday, but it never materialized. Today Musk did provide a technical update and again explained his vision of making humanity a multiplanetary species by sending millions of people to Mars. He shared some of the technical challenges that lay ahead, like propellant transfer in Earth orbit, and also spoke of Starship being used here on Earth for point-to-point trips from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia in less than half an hour, for example.

Musk has spoken on these themes for years. From a nearer term standpoint, however, is when Starship will be ready to land humans on the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program, which he did not discuss.

NASA contracted with SpaceX in 2021 for a Starship Human Landing System (HLS) to put NASA astronauts on the lunar surface in 2024. Many considered that extremely optimistic and NASA’s projected landing date for Artemis III has indeed slipped to mid-2027. But that is just two years away.

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft will get the Artemis III crew into lunar orbit where they will transfer into Starship for the trip down to and back from the surface. Then they get back into Orion for the trip home.

Even if IFT-10 goes perfectly, Starship has yet to reach Earth orbit and the orbiting fuel depots needed to refuel Starship for its trip to the Moon don’t exist. SpaceX must perform an uncrewed lunar landing demonstration first and fire the engines to show it can lift off the surface, although NASA is not requiring SpaceX to demonstrate that Starship can get back into lunar orbit even though it must do that when a crew is aboard.

Starship is a huge vehicle and the astronauts will have to use an elevator to descend 164 feet (50 meters) from the crew cabin to the surface.

Getting American astronauts back on the Moon before China puts taikonauts there, which it plans to do by 2030, is a unifying goal of Republicans and Democrats, and the White House and Congress. Starship is essential to meeting that goal. Journalist Miles O’Brien posted on Substack that “Musk has a way of proving doubters wrong …  But this time the challenges are an order of magnitude greater.”