SpaceX got within 40 seconds of releasing the very first flight of a taller, more effective variation of its Starship rocket Thursday, however a pesky issue with the launch tower kept the car bound to Earth for a minimum of another day.

Clouds and shower cleared the location around SpaceX’s launch website in South Texas, leaving mainly warm skies over the Starship launch pad Thursday afternoon. SpaceX pressed back the launch time by one hour, however the countdown appeared to continue efficiently as soon as propellants started filling into the rocket.

That held true, a minimum of, up until the countdown clock stopped briefly 40 seconds before liftoff. The launch group consistently tried to resume the countdown, just for the computer system managing the launch series to stop the clock once again. There were 5 keeps in all before SpaceX cancelled the launch effort.

“It is seeming like we are not going to have the ability to clear this problem in time today, so we are going to be standing down from a launch,” stated Dan Huot, a SpaceX authorities hosting the business’s live broadcast Thursday. “We got the automobile absolutely packed. We struck a number of various holds as we overcame that count.”

Elon Musk, SpaceX’s creator and CEO, associated the scrub to a hydraulic pin that stopped working to withdraw on an umbilical arm linking the launch tower to the rocket. “If that can be repaired this evening, there will be another launch effort tomorrow,” Musk composed on X. The 90-minute launch window Friday would open at 5:30 pm CDT (22:30 UTC).

The upcoming Starship test flight will mark the very first liftoff from a new launch pad at Starbase, Texas, the 1-year-old city including SpaceX’s South Texas test website near the US-Mexico border. It will be the 12th major test flight of Starship and its Super Heavy booster to date, and the very first to utilize an upgraded style SpaceX calls Starship Version 3. Starship V3 presents various modifications, consisting of 39 more effective, higher-thrust Raptor engines, a revamped propulsion system, 3 bigger grid fins to change 4 smaller sized ones, and a recyclable hot staging ring completely connected to the top of the Super Heavy booster.