Elon Musk’s SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) fell below its $135 IPO price this week, and Thursday night’s Starship launch was supposed to be the catalyst that turned things around.

Instead, the countdown stopped less than a second before liftoff.

“Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort,” Musk wrote on X, adding that two Raptor engines will be replaced ahead of a likely launch attempt early next week.

SPCX closed Thursday at $131.11, a fifth consecutive daily decline, and fell a further 3% to around $127 in Friday’s trading.

The scrubbed mission would have been the first flight since SpaceX’s record-setting IPO last month, carrying 20 Starlink satellites too big for any other rocket.

Why the Rocket Never Left the Pad

Telemetry shown on SpaceX’s livestream indicated four of the Super Heavy booster’s 33 Raptor 3 engines failed to ignite during the startup sequence, according to Ars Technica.

The flight computer shut down the remaining engines and aborted automatically, and crews safely offloaded more than 11.5 million pounds of propellant.

The abort system may have worked exactly as designed, but the engine issue extends a pattern.

On May’s Flight 12, five booster engines failed to relight during the boostback burn, a different failure mode that may keep Raptor reliability in focus for investors.

Wall Street Splits on the Dip

The abort landed on a stock that has already divided Wall Street. Short sellers have reportedly built a bear bet worth roughly $25 billion, while Piper Sandler initiated coverage Thursday at Neutral, citing valuation and looming lock-up expirations on a float where only around 4% of shares trade.

Cathie Wood is taking the other side. Four ARK Invest funds bought 122,807 SPCX shares worth about $16.6 million on Wednesday, part of a buying spree that has reportedly topped $36 million this week.

What Prediction Markets Say

Traders on Polymarket may offer shareholders some comfort. The platform’s Starship Flight Test 13 market prices a 92% chance the rocket flies by the end of July, and 98% odds by the end of August.

Ahead of Thursday’s attempt, the same traders gave an 83% chance the Super Heavy booster explodes, a market whose rules count even planned destruction.

With Musk targeting a new attempt within days, the question for SPCX may be whether liftoff arrives before the lock-up supply does.

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