SpaceX abandons Starship test flight at last minute

Billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX called off the eighth test flight of its Starship rocket on Monday, over an unspecified issue in the core chip of the spacecraft.

"Too many question marks about this flight and then we were 20 bar low on ground spin start pressure," the tech mogul wrote in a post on his social media platform X.

"Best to destack, inspect both stages and try again in a day or two," he wrote, responding to a SpaceX post saying the Starship team was determining the "next best available opportunity to fly." 

The announcement came seconds before the flight was scheduled to take off.

According to the company livestream on X, a 40-second countdown had been paused when engineers likely found issues with the spacecraft during a final check.

What else do we know about the Starship rocket?

This was set to be the first Starship launch since the one in January, which eight minutes into the flight, exploded over the Caribbean.

Debris from the rocket then rained down on the Turks and Caicos Islands prompting a federal probe.

The world's biggest and most powerful rocket — about 100 feet (30 meters) taller than the Statue of Liberty — was set to take off with no crew at 6:45 pm (2345GMT) from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

The rocket is designed to be fully reusable. 

Edited by: Rana Taha