SpaceX is preparing for the eleventh flight of its colossal Starship megarocket, with a launch scheduled for Monday evening, October 13. Live coverage of the event will be available.
The immense Starship, hailed as the most powerful rocket ever developed, is poised for its eleventh flight. The launch is scheduled for Monday, October 13, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT).
The launch is set to occur at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas. Anticipated live coverage will begin approximately 30 minutes before the scheduled liftoff.
SpaceX’s Starship system operates as a two-stage vehicle, pairing the Super Heavy first-stage booster with the ‘Ship’ upper-stage spacecraft. A core principle of its engineering is the full and rapid reusability envisioned for both components.
SpaceX asserts that its vehicle’s groundbreaking combination of immense power and full reusability will enable humanity to establish permanent settlements on Mars. This objective has long been a central aspiration for the company’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk.
Starship’s eleventh test flight is anticipated to closely mirror the mission profile of its predecessor, Flight 10, assuming all operations proceed as planned. The tenth flight, which took place on August 26, successfully concluded with the Super Heavy booster executing a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico approximately 6.5 minutes after liftoff. The Starship upper stage subsequently performed its own targeted splashdown in the Indian Ocean roughly one hour later.
The spacecraft successfully reignited one of its Raptor engines in space and deployed eight non-functional replicas of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband satellites as its payload.
Flight 11 is poised to tackle several key objectives, including the assessment of a new landing burn engine configuration for the Super Heavy booster. Additionally, the mission aims to gather vital data to facilitate the Ship’s eventual return to Starbase, where it is slated for capture by the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms.
The Super Heavy booster has successfully performed this particular operation during three previous Starship test flights. Significantly, the booster slated for Monday’s mission is a veteran of the program, having already completed Starship Flight 8 earlier this year.
SpaceX deliberately removed thermal protection tiles from its Starship spacecraft prior to reentry, a strategic decision aimed at rigorously stress-testing the vehicle’s vulnerable sections. This operational detail was outlined in the company’s Flight 11 mission description.
The company reported that several missing thermal tiles are located in critical areas where they are bonded directly to the vehicle and lack a backup ablative layer. Starship’s Flight 11 will conclude with a trajectory specifically designed to emulate future return paths to Starbase. This final phase includes a dynamic banking maneuver aimed at testing subsonic guidance algorithms, preceding a landing burn and a planned splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
