SpaceX Launches Starship on its Most Bold Check Flight But

SpaceX’s Starship megarocket is again on the launch pad at Boca Chica, ready and prepared for its last flight take a look at of the 12 months. Flight 11, scheduled to elevate off on Monday night on the earliest, may even be the ultimate take a look at flight for this iteration of Starship, Model 2—if all the things goes to plan.

The launch window will open at 7:15 p.m. Japanese on Monday, October 13, in keeping with SpaceX. A livestream of the occasion will start roughly half-hour earlier than liftoff, which you’ll watch at SpaceX.com or the corporate’s account on X. You too can tune in via any of the third-party webcasts under.

A transitional second for SpaceX

Final week, SpaceX shared images of Starship’s Tremendous Heavy booster arrange on its pad at Starbase, the corporate’s launch website in Boca Chica, Texas. The rocket’s higher stage, known as Starship or “Ship” for brief, is stacked on high of the booster forward of its flight.

Starship is the biggest and strongest rocket ever constructed. Altogether, it stands about 400 ft (122 meters) tall. However SpaceX goes greater: The subsequent iteration of Starship—Model 3—will likely be even larger and capable of carrying 100 tons (363 metric tons) to orbit, in keeping with CEO Elon Musk. Its first launch is predicted someday in early 2026.

However earlier than SpaceX can roll out Model 3, the corporate wants this final take a look at of Model 2 to go easily. It’s final take a look at, Flight 10, which lifted off from Starbase in August, went off without a hitch. However that launch adopted a string of explosive failures that had put Starship off-track.

For this take a look at, Starship will comply with a really related flight plan to its final launch, just with a few tweaks to additional stress-test the rocket’s warmth defend and show maneuvers which are designed to imitate how its higher phases will behave when it’s returning to its launch website—Starhsip, in spite of everything, is supposed to be absolutely reusable.

The same however totally different flight plan

Within the eleventh take a look at flight, Starship’s Tremendous Heavy Booster is meant to splash down within the Gulf of Mexico whereas, its higher stage progresses alongside a suborbital arc, then reenters the environment for a water touchdown within the Indian Ocean, in keeping with SpaceX.

The take a look at will try a number of in-space targets, together with a deployment of eight dummy Starlink satellites and a relight of one in every of its Raptor engines. SpaceX has once more eliminated a number of ceramic tiles from the warmth defend to stress-test the rocket’s thermal safety system.

Not like flight 10, nevertheless, this time the spacecraft will carry out a “dynamic banking maneuver” in the course of the last section of the rocket’s reentry, designed to imitate the trail it is going to tackle future flights returning to Starbase.

The booster may even show a “distinctive touchdown burn engine configuration deliberate for use on the subsequent era of Tremendous Heavy,” in keeping with SpaceX. The booster will ignite 13 of its 33 engines to begin the burn, transition to 5 engines to fine-tune its trajectory, then downshift to a few heart engines for the ultimate stage of the burn.

The booster chosen for this launch is flight-proven, having already flown on flight 8 in March. Twenty-four of the booster’s Raptor engines are additionally flight-proven. This would be the second reuse of a Tremendous Heavy booster, a essential take a look at of SpaceX’s speedy reusability technique.

It’s been a turbulent 12 months for the Starship program. After a really shaky begin to the rocket’s 2025 launch schedule, SpaceX is now beneath stress to achieve essential improvement milestones forward of its subsequent iteration. Monday’s launch is one you gained’t need to miss.