SpaceX is targeting Monday, October 13, for the 11th flight test of its next-generation Starship rocket.
The 123-meter-tall vehicle — the world’s largest — will lift off from SpaceX’s Starbase site near Boca Chica in southern Texas in the evening, with both the upper-stage Ship spacecraft and first-stage Super Heavy booster aiming for soft, controlled landings on water in a repeat of the 10th flight test, which took place in August.
Along with the announcement of the 11th flight, SpaceX released a cinematic preview of the upcoming mission. You can watch it below:
Starship’s tenth flight test took a significant step forward in developing the world’s first fully reusable launch vehicle.
Next up: Flight 11 of Starship is targeted to launch as early as Monday, October 13 → https://t.co/YmvmGZUsXW pic.twitter.com/bspqrP9aRj
Set to dramatic music and featuring crystal clear imagery, the preview shows key moments from the Starship’s 10th flight test, including the rocket launch, stage separation, Super Heavy water landing, dummy Starlink satellite deployment, and the Ship’s landing in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX is planning pretty much a repeat of the 10th flight, which was deemed a success and provided engineers with plenty of data to help improve the design of the massive rocket.
It means that the 11th flight won’t bring the booster back to the launch site, a spectacular maneuver than involves the rocket coming to rest in giant mechanical arms attached to the launch tower. SpaceX has already achieved the feat several times, but it’s not clear when it will try it again.
Both the first and upper stage of the Starship are reusable, enabling SpaceX to reduce running costs. Indeed, the Super Heavy booster flying in the 11th flight first launched in the eighth Starship test in March 2025. Also, 24 of the booster’s 33 Raptor engines have been used before.
The long-term goal is to use the Starship for crew and cargo flights to the moon, where NASA wants to build a base for long-term stays similar to how astronauts currently live and work in low-Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station.
The rocket could even be used to fly the first humans to Mars in a mission that could take place in the 2030s at the earliest.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.