SpaceX targets 11th test flight of Starship for October 13

After a successful 10th test, SpaceX will launch Starship’s 11th flight on October 13 from Texas. The test will trial a new Super Heavy landing burn configuration and deploy Starlink simulators, advancing the fully reusable rocket system’s development

New Delhi: After a resounding success of its 10th test flight of Starship, SpaceX is targeting the 11th test flight for October 13, the Elon Musk-led company announced on Tuesday.

The Starship and Super Heavy booster is scheduled to launch from the company’s Starbase site in South Texas on October 13, with a launch window opening at 6.15 pm CT (October 14, 4:45 a.m. IST).

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“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,”  SpaceX said in a post on social media platform X.

During the 11th flight, the booster will launch with 24 flight-proven Raptor engines. Its primary test objective will be demonstrating a unique landing burn engine configuration planned to be used on the next-generation Super Heavy. It will attempt this while on a trajectory to an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America and will not return to the launch site for catch, SpaceX said, in a blog post.

The primary goal of the flight test is to measure the real-world vehicle dynamics as engines shut down while transitioning between the different phases. The Starship upper stage will target multiple in-space objectives, including the deployment of eight Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites.

The flight test also includes several experiments and operational changes focused on enabling Starship’s upper stage to return to the launch site on future flights.

Meanwhile, Starship’s 10th test flight, carried out in August, began with Super Heavy successfully lifting off by igniting all 33 Raptor engines and ascending over the Gulf of America. Using its four flaps for control, the spacecraft arrived at its splashdown point in the Indian Ocean, successfully executed a landing flip, and completed the flight test with a landing burn and soft splashdown.

This came after a series of anomalies during Flight 7, Flight 8, and Flight 9, which lifted off this year — in January, March, and May. On Flight 7 and Flight 8, the Ship exploded less than 10 minutes after launch, while on Flight 9, it broke apart upon reentry to Earth’s atmosphere.

Standing more than 400 feet tall when fully stacked, Starship is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. It consists of two elements, both of which are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable — a booster known as Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft called Starship.

SpaceX is developing Starship to help humanity return to the Moon and settle on Mars. It will launch the moon lander for NASA’s Artemis 3 mission that aims to land astronauts on the Moon.