Starship Flight 8: Why did SpaceX scrub? When will it launch again?

SpaceX scrubbed its Starship Flight 8 launch attempt on Monday afternoon. The cause for the scrub was not entirely shared, but it seemed to have shown up in the late stages of the count and involved the Super Heavy Booster.

SpaceX’s Starship Flight 8 is supposed to be a redo of Flight 7’s goals of testing new heat shield technology, deploying dummy Starlink satellites, and verifying the Block 2 design. However, the launch was scrubbed in the final minutes of the launch Monday night, causing what could be anywhere from a 24-hour to multiple-day delay.

Starship has a unique system that SpaceX is unable to utilize with its smaller Falcon rockets, holding for several minutes at T-40 seconds. For Falcon launches, if a hold is called after propellant loading begins, around T-20 minutes, a scrub has to take place. Meanwhile, if there is an issue that shows up at any time during Starship’s launch, the count can continue until T-40 seconds. If the issue is still present, then the count can be held for several minutes while they continue to assess the situation.

SpaceX shared why they were able to do this during the stream. Starship’s propellant tanks are so large that they actually allow for a slower rate of cooldown compared to Falcon, giving them at least some time to hold the count.

This is precisely what took place during Monday’s launch attempt. At about the T-25 minute mark, an issue with Booster 15 showed up, causing a hold to take place. While the count didn’t stop, this eventually did lead to the hold triggering at the expected T-40 second mark.

After a few minutes into the hold, the problem with the booster was solved; however, another issue with Ship 34 showed up that continued the hold. While SpaceX has the option to hold, it cannot hold at this point for the entire window, which had about 40 minutes left. So, a decision had to be made.

SpaceX eventually cleared the hold and began counting down again. That was until about ten seconds later, when Booster 15 triggered “multiple holds,” which brought us back to T-40 seconds.

With SpaceX already holding here for a good amount of time, nearly six minutes, SpaceX made the call to scrub the launch. No specific reason for the scrub was given other than the holds came from the booster, not the ship.

When can Starship Flight 8 launch again?

It depends on the issue at hand. Luckily, the count didn’t go low enough to trigger the launch pad’s water suppression system, so that doesn’t need to be refilled. However, other commodities like some propellant will need to be refilled.

The live stream’s hosts shared that SpaceX has gotten pretty good at these sorts of operations and what used to be a required multi-day delay can now be as low as 24 hours. However, if the issue that caused the hold needs more work to solve, the delay could push the next launch attempt later into the week.