Whenever Starship can launch, the rocket system will liftoff from Texas and separate in half dozens of miles in altitude, with its Super Heavy booster returning for a water landing off the Texas coast, while Starship ignites its own engines to blast further into space.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has called off a planned test flight of its Starship megarocket following an issue at the launch site. About 30 minutes before the planned liftoff at its Texas launch facility on Sunday, SpaceX said that it was abandoning its 10th test flight to “allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems”.

Bad weather on Monday forced SpaceX to postpone the latest launch of its massive prototype Starship rocket, key to founder Elon Musk's dreams of colonizing Mars and NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon.