Elon Musk’s commercial space launch and astronautics company SpaceX has announced it’s going to conduct the 11th Starship launch and landing test on Monday, 13th October 2025.
Like the previous launches, this is the preliminary launch window. If weather or technical issues arise, like last time in Flight 10, the launch test is conducted on backup launch windows, usually on the next day or even on the 2nd.
According to the official announcement, SpaceX is going to live-stream the Flight 11 Starship launch test (IFT-11) on X. We will also be covering live updates and providing you with alternate live-streams from YouTube as well, so stay tuned.
Flight 11 Starship upper and lower stages (Ship 38 and Booster 15) are the last Block 2 or V2 Starship prototypes that are going to be used in a live launch and landing test. Next Starship launches will be conducted using Block 3 (V3) Starship prototypes.
Starbase Updates (Flight 11 Preparations)
Starship 38 Post Static Fire Test
Elon Musk shared the above image of Flight 11 Starship 38 being moved at the Starbase launch site. The night view of the City of Starbase, Texas gives futuristic vibes when humans would be able to transport between planets and stars, thus the name Starship is given to SpaceX’s flagship spacecraft.
The static fire test stand at the Massey Outpost was destroyed in the Ship 36 explosion. Therefore, SpaceX had to make several modifications to the OLM to perform the static fire test on Ship 38.
These modifications were required because of the different engine and mounting configuration of the Super Heavy Booster (33 engines) and Starship upper stage (6 engines). An adapter was made and installed to perform a static fire test on Ship 37.
As these changes were already in place, SpaceX achieved a quicker turnaround time between the Flight 11 Booster 15 static fire test and the Ship 38 static fire.
After the 6-engine static fire test, SpaceX removed Ship 38 from the launch mount and moved it back to Megabay 2 for pre-launch preparations and checkouts ahead of launch.
Earlier this week, SpaceX staff were seen working under the OLM once again. This work was most probably related to the final preparations for the Flight 11 launch test. However, we’re still around 10 days away from the IFT-11 launch, so there may be other tweaks SpaceX will make.
Heat Shield Tiles
The data and learnings from all the previous flights, especially Flight 10, are going to contribute toward the success of the Flight 11 launch.
According to SpaceX’s VP of Flight Reliability, Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX is not going to perform as many heat shield tests on Flight 11 because they’ve already collected enough data from Flight 10 on the heat shield/TPMS (thermal protection management system).
“Things went extremely well,” Gerstenmaier said in an interview with Ars Technica last month.
As we can see in the image above, some heat shield tiles are missing from the Flight 11 upper stage Ship 38 prototype. This is for the same reason as explained above: SpaceX is not focusing much on TPMS data in the upcoming Starship launch test.
Although there’s a lot happening at Starbase, we only covered updates related to Flight 11 preparations. We will be covering other developments in a separate report.
Interesting Facts
- If the Flight 11 Starship launch happens on 13th October, it will be the 2nd fastest Starship launch turnaround time
- Booster 15 is the first Super Heavy rocket that’s going to be reused after it was caught on landing in the Flight 8 test
- 13th October is also the 1-year anniversary of the historic Booster 12 catch by the launch tower Chopsticks
Stay tuned for future updates on Starship and SpaceX. Follow us on:
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