The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will have to wait a little longer to tie the reuse record.
The company was planning to launch 54 of its Starlink satellites from Space Force Station Cape Canaveral in Florida atop the Falcon 9 on Friday at 12:40 a.m. EDT (0440 GMT). It will be the 16th first-stage mission of this particular rocket, matching a mark set less than a week ago by another Falcon 9.
But that didn’t happen: The SpaceX mission team called for an abort about 40 seconds before T-0, for reasons that weren’t immediately clear.
Related: SpaceX’s massive Starlink satellite is being launched in pictures
“There are 1,000 ways to launch a rocket, and there’s only one way you can get it right,” SpaceX’s Atticus Vadera said during the rocket launch webcast Friday morning. “So given that, we’re very careful on the ground. And if the team or the car sees anything that looks a little off, we’ll stop the countdown.”
Vadera added that the Falcon 9 and Starlink satellites are in good health.
There’s still a lot of spaceflight going on Friday, even without the SpaceX mission. India plans to launch its Chandrayaan 3 robotic mission at 5:05 a.m. EST (0905), even sending a lander and rover toward the moon.
And on Friday evening, the Rocket Lab Electron spacecraft will launch seven small satellites from its site on New Zealand’s North Island. The company plans to recover the Electron first stage after liftoff, as part of its efforts to make the booster as reusable as the Falcon 9.
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