SpaceX halts Starship V3 launch after engine startup issue

SpaceX stopped its second attempted Starship V3 launch on Thursday shortly after the booster ignited at its South Texas site. For investors now watching SpaceX as a public company, the aborted test added fresh pressure to a stock that had already slipped below its IPO price.

CEO Elon Musk said in a post on X that “some of the engines didn’t start,” which caused an automatic launch abort. A launch abort means the rocket’s flight sequence is stopped before liftoff when the system detects a problem. Musk said SpaceX would try again, “hopefully in a few days.”

The company had been trying to get the upgraded Starship system back in the air only weeks after its first Starship V3 launch in May. SpaceX had not immediately released a fuller explanation of the issue beyond Musk’s post.

Why the market cared

Thursday’s attempt was the first Starship test since SpaceX went public on June 12. According to TechCrunch, the listing was the largest initial public offering in history, with SpaceX raising more than $85 billion.

An initial public offering, or IPO, is when a company sells shares to public-market investors for the first time. That move gave everyday investors a direct way to trade SpaceX’s shares, while also putting the company’s test milestones under closer market scrutiny.

TechCrunch reported that SpaceX briefly reached valuations comparable to Amazon and Microsoft after the IPO, but its share price has declined since then. On Thursday, the stock finished regular trading below its $135 IPO price, according to TechCrunch.

After the launch was halted, SpaceX shares fell more than 4% in after-hours trading before recovering some of those losses, TechCrunch reported. After-hours trading happens outside the main stock-market session and can move quickly because fewer shares typically change hands.

Starship remains central to SpaceX’s public story

Starship is SpaceX’s upgraded rocket system, and test flights are a visible part of the company’s development cycle. Thursday’s halt did not involve a liftoff, based on Musk’s explanation that the abort came after some engines failed to start.

The next near-term marker is whether SpaceX can resolve the engine-start issue quickly enough to make another attempt within the timeframe Musk suggested. For shareholders, the event underscores a basic tension in space investing: technical progress often comes through testing, but public markets react in real time when tests do not go as planned.

This story draws on original reporting from TechCrunch.