SpaceX has scheduled the eleventh test flight of its Starship rocket for Monday, October 13, with the launch window opening at 4:15 p.m. PT / 7:15 p.m. ET. A live webcast will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff on the company’s website, X account, and the X TV app.
This comes after SpaceX initially targeted October 6 for the flight but opted to push the test back by a week. It also follows the company’s successful tenth flight test of Starship in late August, which saw the spacecraft nail its first Starlink simulator deployment and all other mission objectives.
Flight 11 will continue using SpaceX’s current Starship V2 design while testing a new landing burn sequence for the Super Heavy booster. The booster, flying for the second time after first launching on Flight 8, will ignite 13 Raptor engines at the start of its landing burn before transitioning to five engines for the divert phase. This is an upgrade from the previous three-engine configuration, adding redundancy and enabling finer control.
For the final phase, the booster will shift down to its three center engines, enter a controlled hover above the Gulf of America, and then splash down. The goal is to gain a better understanding of how the vehicle behaves when transitioning between burn phases.
Meanwhile, Starship’s upper stage will carry out several in-space objectives. These include deploying eight Starlink simulators, similar in size to SpaceX’s next-generation internet satellites, relighting a single Raptor engine in orbit, and intentionally stress-testing its heat shield with missing tiles. The flight will also feature a dynamic banking maneuver and subsonic guidance tests before splashdown in the Indian Ocean — both crucial steps toward enabling future Starship upper stages to return to Starbase.
While Flight 11 is focused on refining Starship V2, SpaceX’s next-generation Starship V3 could debut later this year. Elon Musk has said the V3 variant will begin “heavy flight activity” in 2026, with payload deliveries, in-orbit refueling, and the first attempt to catch a returning Starship upper stage on the horizon. Musk recently noted that SpaceX could begin handling more than 95% of Earth’s payload to orbit once Starship enters the fray.
Stay tuned for updates on Starship Flight 11 as the launch window approaches, and follow along on SpaceX’s launch live stream when it kicks off on October 13.
