SpaceX plans to launch the eleventh check flight of its Starship megarocket on Monday night (Oct. 13), and we have the data you’ll want to tune in reside.
The Starship Flight 11 check is scheduled to launch from SpaceX’s Starbase website in South Texas on Monday (Oct. 13), throughout a 75-minute window that opens at 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT; 6:15 p.m. native Texas time). You can watch the liftoff reside on this web page, courtesy of SpaceX. You can go to our Starship Flight 11 reside updates web page for the newest data.
Flight 11 would be the fifth Starship launch of 2025. SpaceX hopes to construct on the success of Flight 10, which launched on Aug. 26 and achieved all of its major objectives. (Flight 7, Flight 8 and Flight 9, which also launched this year, were more checkered; SpaceX lost the Starship upper stage prematurely on each of them.) SpaceX intends to settle Mars using Starship, and NASA has tapped the vehicle as the first crewed lander for its Artemis program of moon exploration. But the 400-foot-tall (121-meter-tall) Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built — is still in the testing phase, and the company hopes Monday’s action will get it closer to the finish line.
What time is SpaceX’s Starship Flight 11 launch?
SpaceX is targeting Monday (Oct. 13), for the launch of Starship Flight 11, with liftoff expected at 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT). SpaceX has a 75-minute launch window, however, so Starship could fly any time between 7:15 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. EDT (2315 to 0030 GMT).
According to local road closure alerts around Starbase, SpaceX has backup Flight 11 launch dates on Tuesday (Oct. 14) and Wednesday (Oct. 15), if Starship can’t get off the ground on Monday.
Related: Read our SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy guide for a detailed look
Can I watch SpaceX’s Starship Flight 11 launch?
You can watch SpaceX’s Starship Flight 11 test launch in a few ways.
SpaceX will stream the liftoff live via its X account, in addition to on its Starship Flight 11 mission page and the X TV app. Coverage will start about half-hour earlier than launch — so, at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT), if SpaceX continues to focus on the start of the launch window on Monday.
Space.com will simulcast the SpaceX Flight 11 stream on this web page, in addition to on our homepage and our YouTube channel.
If you desire a longer livestream, you possibly can take a look at NASASpaceflight’s webcast on YouTube. This stream will start at about 4:15 p.m. EDT (2015 GMT) and have reside commentary throughout “go for launch” polling and different key preflight actions.
Finally, for those who’re within the space, you possibly can watch SpaceX’s Starship Flight 11 in individual. SpaceX does not have an official launch-viewing website for the general public or the media, however yow will discover a spot your self.
One good possibility is Cameron County Amphitheater, in Isla Blanca Park on South Padre Island, which offers clear views of Starbase’s orbital launch mount from throughout the water. You can even stake out a spot alongside the shore of close by Port Isabel.
Traffic within the space tends to get very heavy within the leadup to a Starship launch, so plan to get to your most well-liked viewing website early — a number of hours early, if potential.
How lengthy is SpaceX’s Starship Flight 11?
If all goes according to plan, Starship Flight 11 will last just over an hour. The mission will be broadly similar to Flight 10, with ocean landings planned for both Starship stages — the Super Heavy booster and Starship (or “Ship” for short) upper stage. (There will be no “chopsticks” catch of Super Heavy by the Starbase launch tower this time.)
“The upcoming flight will build on the successful demonstrations from Starship’s 10th flight test with flight experiments gathering data for the next-generation Super Heavy booster, stress-testing Starship’s heat shield, and demonstrating maneuvers that will mimic the upper stage’s final approach for a future return to launch site,” SpaceX wrote in a mission overview.
The Flight 11 Super Heavy already has a launch underneath its belt — it carried out Flight 8 on March 6, capping its work that day with a profitable return to Starbase for a chopsticks catch. Twenty-four of its 33 Raptor engines are veterans of that earlier mission, in keeping with SpaceX.
The chief goal for Super Heavy this time round is to check a brand new landing-burn technique for the next-generation Starship, an even bigger car that is anticipated to debut early subsequent yr. (Flight 11 would be the last launch of the present “Version 2” iteration of Starship.)
“Super Heavy will ignite 13 engines at the start of the landing burn and then transition to a new configuration with five engines running for the divert phase,” SpaceX wrote within the mission description.
“Previously done with three engines, the planned baseline for V3 Super Heavy will use five engines during the section of the burn responsible for fine-tuning the booster’s path, adding additional redundancy for spontaneous engine shutdowns,” the corporate added. “The booster will then transition to its three center engines for the end of the landing burn, entering a full hover while still above the ocean surface, followed by shutdown and dropping into the Gulf of America.”
|
TIME (Hr:Min:Sec) | EVENT | Header Cell – Column 2 |
|---|---|---|
| T-1:15:00 | Flight director polls for fueling | Row 0 – Cell 2 |
| T-0:53:00 | Ship liquid methane loading begins | Row 1 – Cell 2 |
| T-0:46:10 | Ship liquid oxygen loading begins | Row 2 – Cell 2 |
| T-0:41:15 | Super Heavy liquid methane loading begins | Row 3 – Cell 2 |
| T-0:35:52 | Super Heavy liquid oxygen loading begins | Row 4 – Cell 2 |
| T-00:19:40 | Raptor engine chilldown begins on Ship and Super Heavy | Row 5 – Cell 2 |
| T-00:3:20 | Ship fueling full | Row 6 – Cell 2 |
| T-00:2:50 | Super Heavy fueling full | Row 7 – Cell 2 |
| T-00:0:30 | Flight Director GO for launch ballot | Row 8 – Cell 2 |
| T-00:00:10 | Flame deflector activation | Row 9 – Cell 2 |
| T-00:00:03 | Raptor ignition sequence startup | Row 10 – Cell 2 |
| T-00:00:00 | Liftoff (“Excitement Guaranteed,” SpaceX says) | Row 11 – Cell 2 |
|
TIME (Hr:Min:Sec) | FLIGHT EVENT | Header Cell – Column 2 |
|---|---|---|
| T+00:02 | Liftoff | Row 0 – Cell 2 |
| T+01:02 | Ship/Super Heavy attain “Max Q” | Row 1 – Cell 2 |
| T+02:37 | Super Heavy foremost engine cutoff | Row 2 – Cell 2 |
| T+02:39 | Hot-staging separation/Ship Raptor engine ignition | Row 3 – Cell 2 |
| T+02:49 | Super Heavy boostback burn startup | Row 4 – Cell 2 |
| T+03:38 | Super Heavy boostback burn engine shutdown | Row 5 – Cell 2 |
| T+03:40 | Hot-stage jettison | Row 6 – Cell 2 |
| T+06:20 | Super Heavy touchdown burn startup | Row 7 – Cell 2 |
| T+06:36 | Super Heavy touchdown burn shutdown (adopted by splashdown) | Row 8 – Cell 2 |
| T+08:58 | Starship engine cutoff | Row 9 – Cell 2 |
| T+00:18:28 | Payload deploy demo begins | Row 10 – Cell 2 |
| T+00:25:33 | Payload deploy demo full | Row 11 – Cell 2 |
| T+00:37:49 | Ship engine relight demonstration | Row 12 – Cell 2 |
| T+00:47:43 | Ship reentry | Row 13 – Cell 2 |
| T+01:03:30 | Ship transonic | Row 14 – Cell 2 |
| T+1:03:52 | Ship is subsonic | Row 15 – Cell 2 |
| T+1:05:58 | Landing burn begin | Row 16 – Cell 2 |
| T+1:06:00 | Landing flip | Row 17 – Cell 2 |
| T+1:06:09 | Landing burn three to 2 engines | Row 18 – Cell 2 |
| T+1:06:25 | “An exciting landing!” SpaceX says. | Row 19 – Cell 2 |
Ship will fly a lot farther and longer than Super Heavy on Flight 11. As on Flight 10, the higher stage will deploy eight payloads (dummy variations of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband satellites) into suborbital house. This milestone is scheduled to happen over a seven-minute stretch starting 18.5 minutes after liftoff.
Ship will even briefly reignite one among its six Raptor engines in house a bit of underneath 38 minutes into the flight, demonstrating a key functionality for a car designed to journey to the moon and Mars.
In addition, Flight 11 will put Ship’s warmth protect and different reentry methods to the check, gathering knowledge to pave the way in which for “chopstick” catches of the higher stage down the street.
“For reentry, tiles have been removed from Starship to intentionally stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle,” SpaceX wrote within the mission description. “Several of the missing tiles are in areas where tiles are bonded to the vehicle and do not have a backup ablative layer. To mimic the path a ship will take on future flights returning to Starbase, the final phase of Starship’s trajectory on Flight 11 includes a dynamic banking maneuver and will test subsonic guidance algorithms prior to a landing burn and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.”
Ship is predicted to reenter Earth’s ambiance just below 48 minutes after launch and hit the water off the coast of Western Australia about 18 minutes later.
What if Starship Flight 11 can’t launch?
SpaceX has two official backup days for Flight 11 at this point, according to a beach and road closure notice issued by Texas’ Cameron County — Tuesday (Oct. 14) and Wednesday (Oct. 15).
The launch home windows are doubtless the identical on Tuesday and Wednesday, although we’ll have to attend for affirmation from SpaceX on that finish.