SpaceX Starship Launch Aborted on the Pad at the last moment

Four engines refusing to fire. That was all it took to stop the world's most powerful rocket cold on the launch pad Thursday.

SpaceX's Starship, a 407-foot giant with 33 engines, came within seconds of liftoff before its automatic systems caught the problem and shut everything down. It was the first time a full-scale Starship had experienced a last-second abort like this. Fuel was drained, and Elon Musk took to X to say another attempt was "hopefully in a few days."

The stakes are considerable. Aboard Starship were 20 of SpaceX's newest Starlink satellites, and the rocket remains central to NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon.

Both SpaceX and Blue Origin need their lunar landers ready by 2027, so the Artemis III crew can practice docking in Earth orbit before a later mission carries two astronauts to the moon's south pole.

Thursday was a setback, but not, SpaceX insists, a disaster.