SpaceX is targeting October 13 for the next launch of its Starship megarocket, Flight 11, marking the final mission for the current Version 2 iteration. Liftoff is scheduled from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas at 7:15 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The company will stream the launch live starting 30 minutes before takeoff.
Starship is being developed to support humanity’s long-term goal of settling Mars. The rocket has two main stainless-steel components designed for full reusability. The first stage is the Super Heavy booster, and the upper stage is called Starship or Ship. Version 2 stands as the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, reaching nearly 400 feet tall when stacked. Version 3, set to debut on Flight 12, will be even taller at 408 feet, while Version 4 in 2027 is expected to reach 466 feet.
Flight 11 will closely resemble Flight 10, which successfully launched on August 26. In that flight, Super Heavy splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, and Ship landed in the Indian Ocean near Australia after deploying eight mock Starlink satellites. Flight 11 will aim for the same landing zones and will deploy another eight dummy Starlinks. SpaceX will also remove some heat shield tiles from Ship to “intentionally stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle.”
Super Heavy will demonstrate a new landing burn technique for the next generation of boosters. It will use five of its 33 Raptor engines to fine-tune its descent instead of the usual three, “adding additional redundancy for spontaneous engine shutdowns.” Flight 11 will mark the second launch for this specific booster, which previously completed Flight 8 in March. Twenty-four of its 33 Raptors are flight-proven. This will be the second time SpaceX reuses a Super Heavy booster, following Flight 9 on May 27.
Flight 11 represents a key step in SpaceX’s ongoing Starship program, blending advanced engineering, reuse technology, and incremental improvements to support future missions.
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