SpaceX cancels Starship SN11 test until Friday at the earliest

Elon Musk claims Mars-bound craft is ‘almost ready to fly’

Starship SN11 could fly from Boca Chica, Texas, just two weeks after SN10’s flight test (SpaceX)

SpaceX has cancelled two potential launch dates for its Starship SN11 spacecraft.

The next prototype of its Mars-bound craft is already on the launchpad at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility in Texas, with road closures in the surrounding area originally scheduled for every day this week.

Cameron County updated its public notice listings of temporary closures relating to SpaceX on Wednesday, cancelling closures for both Wednesday 24 March and Thursday 25 March, and removing the closure listed for Friday.

Starship testing does not take place on weekends, meaning if Friday’s closure is also cancelled then the earliest launch will be Monday 29 March.

SpaceX is yet to give a reason for the cancellations and typically does not announce Starship tests until less than an hour before they take place, when they post a live stream of the launchpad to Twitter and YouTube.

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted last week that SN11 is “almost ready to fly”, just two weeks after the Starship SN10 high-altitude test ended in a fiery explosion.

A static fire test was completed on Monday, however there are a variety of factors that need to line up before a launch can take place.

This includes regulatory approval from the FAA, favourable weather conditions, hardware preparations, as well as the local road closures.

Depending on the success of the SN11 test, SpaceX is aiming to conduct the first ever orbital flight of the next-generation rocket before 1 July.

Tickets for the first ever commercial Starship flight have already been sold, with a trip around the moon planned for 2023.

Crewed missions to Mars could then take place as early as 2024, according to projections from Mr Musk, though the technology billionaire has a history of setting overly ambitious timeframes that are not always met.