One reason SpaceX isn’t attempting an orbital flight this week is Starship’s failure to complete one of its test objectives on the last launch, when the spacecraft was supposed to ignite one of its six Raptor engines for a brief burn in space. The spacecraft skipped the burn after a Raptor engine shut down prematurely during the launch sequence.
The rest of the ship’s flight went according to plan, culminating in a pinpoint splashdown in the Indian Ocean. It was the first flight of SpaceX’s Starship V3 debuting new, more powerful Raptor engines. But officials need confidence in the Raptor engine’s ability to reignite in the airless vacuum of
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