SpaceX aborted the first Starship test flight since its initial public offering on Thursday, sending shares down more than 3 percent in extended trading and extending a losing streak to five sessions below the $135 offer price. The scrub underscores the technical risk that continues to shadow a valuation propped by the rocket’s central role in the Starlink broadband constellation and NASA’s Artemis moon program.
A 90-minute launch window opened at 6:45 p.m. Eastern time from the Starbase complex in South Texas before an automatic abort shut down the booster engines as they began to ignite. Chief Executive Elon Musk wrote on X that some engines failed to start and that two Raptor engines would be removed and replaced, targeting a new attempt early next week. The vehicle was slated to carry 20 next-generation Starlink satellites designed to deploy and then demise on reentry roughly 20 minutes later.
The stock closed the regular session at $131.11, down more than 3 percent on the day, after briefly piercing the IPO level on Wednesday. Since the listing last month, which raised $85.7 billion including the underwriters’ option to become the largest offering on record, shares have swung sharply before settling into a steady decline that has erased the post-debut premium.
Thursday’s mission would have marked the first flight of the upgraded Starship V3 configuration since a May test ended with the Super Heavy booster plummeting into the Gulf of Mexico after several engines failed to reignite for landing. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded the vehicle until Monday, when it cleared a return to flight after citing heat effects on propulsion components and erroneous engine alarm settings as the most probable root causes. SpaceX committed to four corrective actions spanning hardware and software updates.
Investors are treating the test campaign as a proxy for the company’s ability to scale Starlink capacity and meet NASA milestones for a crewed lunar landing. The next launch window will test whether the corrective measures hold under flight conditions and whether the share slide stabilizes once the vehicle demonstrates a nominal ascent and stage separation.