SpaceX Starship Flight 8 scrubbed at T-40 seconds

SpaceX has officially scrubbed the Starship Flight 8 rocket launch from Starbase, Texas due to an internal flight vehicle diagnostic that requires more time to complete the investigation on a standing issue.

The launch window for this mission was planned at 5:30 p.m. CT but it later expanded to 5:45 p.m. The live stream of the test flight started 40 minutes prior to the liftoff and the reverse countdown went well until the mission control announced a hold on the propellant load due to some internal issue.

SpaceX Starship Flight 8 T-40 seconds hold

The countdown and propellant load soon resumed but a T-40 seconds hold was automatically applied before liftoff to conduct final checks, and the company eventually decided to scrub the launch.

Now, the company will offload the propellant and prepare for the next launch window. However, that will only depend on the after-scrub investigation.

In the practicality of this conversation, SpaceX could attempt another launch in 24 hours at the same launch window tomorrow.

Flight 8

This new flight is aiming to check all of the objectives that weren’t completed during Flight 7.

The flight will fly in the same suborbital trajectory as the previous missions, starting with the liftoff, including 33 Raptor engines burning at full power.

After completing the hot-staging, the booster will perform a bootback burn to return to the launch site for a tower catch.

On the other hand, the ship will go into space and attempt the first payload deployment of four Starlink simulators, these will be the same size as the next-generation Starlink satellites.

Then the ship will continue its suborbital journey and relight one Raptor engine. The ship will then reenter the Earth’s atmosphere to endure high-heat and conduct a splashdown in the Indian Ocean.