STARBASE, TEXAS — SpaceX scrubbed the first launch attempt of its Starship V3 rocket due to a ground system issue, with the countdown clock pausing 40 seconds before liftoff after propellants began loading. The launch team made five holds before calling off the attempt, and a new 90-minute window opens at 5:30 pm CDT (22:30 UTC) on Friday.

"It is sounding like we are not going to be able to clear this issue in time today, so we are going to be standing down from a launch. We got the vehicle totally loaded. We hit a couple of different holds as we worked through that count," said SpaceX official Dan Huot. "If that can be fixed tonight, there will be another launch attempt tomorrow," SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk wrote on X.

The mission will be the first liftoff from a new launch pad at Starbase, Texas, a one-year-old city encompassing SpaceX's South Texas test site near the U.S.–Mexico border. It will also be the 12th full-scale test flight of Starship and its Super Heavy booster, and the first to use the overhauled Starship Version 3 design.

Starship V3 features 39 higher-thrust Raptor engines, a redesigned propulsion system, three larger grid fins replacing four smaller ones, and a reusable hot staging ring permanently attached to the top of the Super Heavy booster. During the countdown, engineers pumped more than 11 million pounds of methane and liquid oxygen into the rocket in less than 40 minutes.

Musk wrote that the seven-month gap since the last Starship launch was due to an almost total redesign of the primary structure, engines, electronics, and launch tower from V2. He added that SpaceX has a large pipeline of V3 ships and boosters in the factory.

Although Starship and Super Heavy are designed for full reusability, SpaceX does not plan to recover either stage on this flight. The rocket will fly south over the Gulf of Mexico between the Yucatan Peninsula and the western tip of Cuba, rather than over the Florida Keys.

The Super Heavy booster, which stands more than 20 stories tall, will separate from the Starship upper stage about two and a half minutes into the flight and guide itself to a controlled splashdown off the coast of Texas. Once in space, Starship will release 20 mock-ups of SpaceX's next-generation Starlink satellites, including two deployable units fitted with cameras to photograph the upper stage in flight. About 48 minutes after liftoff, the upper stage will reenter the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean and target a splashdown northwest of Australia.