WASHINGTON (Reuters) – SpaceX has postponed its second attempt to launch the company’s Starship rocket system into space by one day, until Saturday, its CEO said. Elon Musk He said, citing a piece of flight control hardware that needed to be replaced.
“We need to replace the grid fin actuator, so the launch has been postponed to Saturday,” Musk wrote on the X messaging platform.
The launch is scheduled to take place at the company’s Starbase site on the Gulf of Mexico near Boca Chica, Texas.
SpaceX is aiming to make a second attempt to launch its 400-foot (122-meter) Starship rocket system into space for the first time, after a test flight in April in which the rocket exploded about four minutes after blasting off from Texas.
Company officials said that the missile had been ready to fly for months, awaiting approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration, which the company obtained on Wednesday.
The upcoming flight is one of many crucial tests in SpaceX’s development drive to build a fully reusable rocket capable of sending about 150 tons of satellites into space, as well as humans to the Moon and eventually Mars.
(Reporting by Joey Rowlett, Editing by Chris Reese and Will Dunham)
