Elon Musk’s space launch and astronautics company is gearing up for the 11th launch and landing test of its Starship spacecraft (IFT-11). The preparations at the SpaceX Starbase launch site are in full swing.
SpaceX announced the date of Starship Flight 11 launch last week; it’s going to happen as early as Monday, 13th October. However, if delayed for any reason, SpaceX will utilize backup launch windows on the following days.
The lower-stage Super Heavy Booster 15-2 rocket was moved to the launch site on Wednesday. Yesterday, SpaceX moved the Flight 11 upper-stage Starship 38 (Ship 38 prototype) to the launch site.
Stunning visuals of the Starship and the epic Super Heavy booster were shared by SpaceX on Musk’s social media platform X. Interestingly, three Tesla Cybertruck pickup trucks led the rollout of Ship 38 to the orbital launch mount (OLM) Pad 1.
Yesterday, SpaceX also loaded the Starlink V3 simulator satellites (dummy units) into the payload bay of Ship 38. This procedure was done before rolling out the Flight 11 Starship to the launch site.
In the previous Flight 10 launch test, SpaceX successfully deployed the payload of dummy Starlink satellites. This was one of the major objectives of the previous flights. In Flight 11, SpaceX is going to test this function once again.
Talking of objectives, SpaceX outlined the following in its Flight 11 official updates page:
The upcoming flight will build on the successful demonstrations from Starship’s tenth flight test with flight experiments gathering data for the next generation Super Heavy booster, stress-testing Starship’s heatshield, and demonstrating maneuvers that will mimic the upper stage’s final approach for a future return to launch site.
According to the latest updates from Starbase, Texas, SpaceX has fully integrated the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage as the launch test approaches tomorrow.
Starship’s 11th integrated flight test (IFT-11) is conducted using the Ship 38 upper stage and Booster 15-2 prototypes of the last Block 2 Starship.
The ‘2’ in the name of this specific Super Heavy rocket booster prototype is because it’s getting reused in Flight 11 after a successful catch by the launch tower in the Flight 8 test earlier this year.
SpaceX is going to attempt the Starship Flight 11 launch and landing test tomorrow, i.e., Monday, 13th October, as early as 6:15 PM Central Time (CT) / 7:15 Eastern Time (EST).
Stay tuned as we will be covering live updates of the Flight 11 Starship launch and subsequent events and happenings. You can find the entire archive of Starship flights here.
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