A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket may have to attend a bit longer to tie a reuse record.
The corporate had planned to launch 54 of its Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida atop a Falcon 9 on Friday at 12:40 a.m. EDT (0440 GMT). It’ll be the sixteenth mission for this particular rocket’s first stage, matching a mark set lower than per week ago by one other Falcon 9.
But it surely didn’t occur: The SpaceX mission team called an abort about 40 seconds before T-0, for reasons that weren’t immediately clear.
Related: SpaceX’s Starlink satellite megaconstellation launches in photos
“There are 1,000 ways to launch a rocket, and there is only a technique that it will probably go right,” SpaceX’s Atticus Vadera said during Friday morning’s launch webcast. “So, provided that, we’re overly cautious on the bottom. And if the team or the vehicle sees anything that appears just even barely off, we are going to stop the countdown.”
The Falcon 9 and the Starlink satellites are in good health, Vadera added.
There’s still loads of spaceflight motion on Friday, even without the SpaceX mission. India plans to launch its robotic Chandrayaan 3 mission at 5:05 a.m. EDT (0905), for instance, sending a lander and rover toward the moon.
And on Friday evening, a Rocket Lab Electron vehicle will launch seven small satellites from its site on the North Island of Recent Zealand. The corporate plans to get better the Electron’s first stage after liftoff, a part of its effort to make the booster reusable just like the Falcon 9.