SpaceX Plans 11th Starship Test Flight From Texas
SpaceX is preparing for the 11th test flight of its Starship program, with liftoff anticipated from the company’s Starbase facility in Texas as early as Monday evening. The window opens at 6:15 p.m. CDT, and the launch will be streamed on X, Elon Musk’s social platform. As with all developmental tests, SpaceX cautioned that the schedule can shift, reflecting the program’s iterative nature and the challenges of testing a fully reusable spacecraft.
What’s At Stake in This Flight
This flight marks another key milestone in SpaceX’s long-running effort to validate Starship’s performance and its role in broader spaceflight goals. The booster for this mission previously flew during the eighth test flight and will lift off with 24 reused Raptor engines. Instead of returning to the launch site, the booster is planned to land in the Gulf of Mexico, a maneuver intended to gather data on recovery and control during the final phases of descent.
SpaceX has outlined a novel engine configuration for the landing burn that will be tested on this flight. At the start of the descent, 13 engines will fire, followed by a shift to five engines to guide the vehicle toward its splashdown. This more complex burn profile is designed to provide engineers with better control and a safety margin in case any individual engine shuts down. The booster is expected to complete its descent with three central engines before hovering briefly above the water and entering the Gulf of Mexico for a planned splashdown.
Starship in the Upper Stage and Its Payload
In the upper stage, Starship will carry eight mock Starlink satellites—each sized to match the next generation of SpaceX’s internet satellites. The test also includes an ambitious step: attempting to restart one engine while the spacecraft is in orbit, a crucial capability for reusability and for future long-duration missions.
Another notable aspect of this flight is what SpaceX is trying to learn about reentry. Engineers will observe the vehicle as it returns to Earth, including a banking maneuver intended to simulate how future Starship flights will steer during their return paths. In a move tied to ongoing development, SpaceX has removed some heat-shield tiles in targeted areas to study how unprotected sections perform during re-entry, a data point that could influence future heatshield design choices.
Why It Matters for Artemis and Moon Ambitions
The Starship program sits at the core of NASA’s Artemis plans to return humans to the Moon and establish a sustainable presence. Although Starship’s path to operational moon landings remains uncertain, this test flight represents a step toward demonstrating a fully reusable crew and cargo vehicle that could support lunar missions and, in time, crewed lunar landings. The outcome of this mission—whether the engine restart works as intended and how the vehicle handles the descent—will influence the pace of Artemis-related development and NASA’s reliance on SpaceX hardware.
Competitive Space Milestones and Global Context
As SpaceX advances, other space programs push forward as well. China’s space agency has outlined plans to place astronauts on the Moon by 2030, intensifying a broader international lunar race. Observers including Bill Nye of The Planetary Society have described the coming years as a turning point in space exploration, with multiple nations and private companies pursuing lunar and deep-space capabilities in parallel.
Coinciding with the Starship test is SpaceX’s separate Project Kuiper launch from Cape Canaveral later in the evening, using a Falcon 9 to deploy 24 satellites for Amazon’s broadband constellation. The juxtaposition of Starship’s high-risk testing with Kuiper’s commercial deployment underscores SpaceX’s broad role in shaping both government and commercial spaceflight in the near term.
What observers Should Watch For
Key indicators will include the engines’ performance during the ascent and descent, the behavior of the landing burn, the accuracy of the Gulf of Mexico splashdown, and the readiness to attempt an in-orbit restart of one of Starship’s engines. While the mission is a test, its outcomes could influence NASA’s trajectory for Artemis and SpaceX’s future flight manifest.
As always with Starship tests, enthusiasts should monitor official SpaceX updates in addition to live streams. The company has historically used these flights to refine designs, propulsion strategies, and flight profiles in pursuit of truly reusable, scalable spaceflight.
