On Monday, April 17, 2023, a Space X launch was scheduled. Due to a pressurization issue, “A pressurant valve appears to be frozen, so unless it starts operating soon, no launch today,” Space X CEO Elon Musk said on his Twitter. The mission could continue in 48 hours if the issue is resolved in time.

The Starship orbital launch is the result of years of technological testing and continuous work. The first orbital Starship launch was supposed to take place as early as the summer of 2021, however, development setbacks and FAA approval pushed back the date. NASA’s goal to send astronauts back to the moon depends on the development of a starship, which is built to transport people and goods beyond Earth. NASA awarded Space X a contract worth about $3 billion two years ago to deploy Starship as a crewed lunar lander. Starship would then be put to use in NASA’s Artemis lunar program which they have been working on for more than 50 years.

Ashley Kourey, Astronomy teacher at Smoky, explains, “Failure is just kind of a part of doing that, and because these are so super expensive pieces of equipment that we’re building, we want to err on the side of caution because you don’t want to send billions of dollars up and then have it explode immediately.” This tells us that errors are good to make to learn and improve from.