SpaceX aims to overcome Starship setbacks with tenth flight test

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Elon Musk's SpaceX will try to launch its giant Starship rocket for a tenth time from Texas on Monday to overcome a streak of development setbacks and achieve several long-sought milestones essential to the Mars rocket system's reusable design.

The 232-foot (71-meter) tall Super Heavy booster and its 171-foot tall Starship upper half - together taller than New York's Statue of Liberty - sat stacked on a launch mount at SpaceX's Starbase rocket facilities ahead of a 7:30 p.m. ET liftoff time.

A liquid oxygen leak at the Starship launchpad nixed a Sunday launch attempt, billionaireMusk wrote on X overnight, adding SpaceX would try again on Monday. It was unclear whether Musk intended to give a pre-launch Starship talk that had been planned but cancelled on Sunday.

Development of SpaceX's next-generation rocket, key to the company's powerful launch business and Musk's goal to send humans to Mars, has faced repeated hiccups this year.

NASA hopes to use the rocket as soon as 2027 for its first crewed moon landing since the Apollo program. SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet business, a major source of company revenue, is also tied to Starship's success. Musk aims to use Starship to launch larger batches of Starlink satellites, which have so far been deployed by SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, into space.

"In about 6 or 7 years, there will be days where Starship launches more than 24 times in 24 hours," Musk said on Sunday, replying to a user on X.