<\/p>\n Today’s mission, which lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase<\/a> site in South Texas, was the 11th overall test flight for the Starship program. It was also the final launch of the current version of the giant vehicle, which will soon be replaced by an even larger variant. And this swan song was a memorable one.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n “Let ’em hear it, Starbase!” SpaceX<\/a> spokesperson Dan Huot said during the company’s launch webcast today, as employees at the site cheered the test flight’s successful conclusion. “What a day!”<\/p>\n \n SpaceX’s 11th Starship megarocket launches on a test flight from Starbase, Texas, on Oct. 13, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)A rocket for the moon and Mars<\/p>\n SpaceX is developing Starship to help humanity settle Mars<\/a>, a long-held dream of company founder and CEO Elon Musk<\/a>. Indeed, Musk, the world’s richest man, has said he established SpaceX back in 2002 primarily to help our species set up shop on the Red Planet.<\/p>\n The moon is also in Starship’s sights: NASA chose the vehicle to be the first crewed lander for its Artemis program<\/a>, which aims to put boots on the moon for the first time since the Apollo<\/a> era. If all goes to plan, Starship will land astronauts near the lunar south pole for the first time on the Artemis 3<\/a> mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2027.<\/p>\n Musk was on hand Monday evening to watch the Starship Flight 11 launch in person. But not from launch control.<\/p>\n “This is really the first time I’m going to be outside and watching the rocket,” Musk said during a brief cameo on SpaceX’s launch livestream. “It’s going to be much more visceral.”<\/p>\n Image 1 of 6<\/p>\n Starship’s secret sauce is its envisioned ability to loft incredibly large payloads with mind-boggling frequency. The vehicle is capable of carrying 165 tons (150 metric tons) to the final frontier, and both of its stages \u2014 the Super Heavy booster and an upper stage known as Starship, or Ship for short \u2014 are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.<\/p>\n SpaceX plans to bring both Super Heavy and Ship back to the pad after each flight, catching them with the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms. This strategy \u2014 which SpaceX has demonstrated three times<\/a> to date with Super Heavy, though not yet with Ship \u2014 will allow superfast inspection and reflight, potentially allowing Starship to launch multiple times per day from a single site, according to Musk.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Today’s launch, by coincidence, occurred on the one-year anniversary of SpaceX’s first historic catch of a Super Heavy booster<\/a>, on the Starship Flight 5 test flight.<\/p>\n The current iteration of the vehicle, known as Version 2, stands about 403 feet (123 meters) tall fully stacked. But future variants will be even bigger<\/a>: Version 3 will be roughly 408 feet (124.4 m) tall, and a “Future Starship” that Musk teased in a May 2025 presentation will tower a whopping 466 feet (142 m) above the ground.<\/p>\n “Future Starship” is likely Version 4, which Musk later said<\/a> is expected to debut in 2027. V4 will have a total of 42 Raptor engines \u2014 three more than the V2 and V3 variants. (The extra three will go on Ship, giving the upper stage nine engines.)<\/p>\n Test flight setbacks \u2014\u00a0and a bounceback<\/p>\n These are quite ambitious plans, and this summer they seemed even more so. On three straight test launches \u2014 Flight 7<\/a> in January, Flight 8<\/a> in March and Flight 9<\/a> in May \u2014 SpaceX lost Ship prematurely.<\/p>\n On Flights 7 and 8, the upper stage exploded less than 10 minutes after liftoff, sending debris raining down<\/a> on parts of the Caribbean. On Flight 9, Ship broke apart upon reentry to Earth’s atmosphere<\/a>.<\/p>\n SpaceX lost another Ship in June, this time at Starbase: The vehicle that was being prepped for Flight 10 exploded on the test stand<\/a>, forcing the company to press another Ship into service.<\/p>\n But that replacement upper stage performed well, as did its Super Heavy partner: Flight 10<\/a>, which launched on Aug. 26, was a complete success<\/a>. The booster came back to Earth as planned for a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about 6.5 minutes after liftoff, and Ship did the same in the Indian Ocean an hour later.<\/p>\n Ship also managed to relight one of its Raptors in space, demonstrating an ability that will be crucial for future missions to the moon and Mars. The vehicle also deployed some payloads \u2014 eight dummy versions of SpaceX’s Starlink<\/a> satellites, which were released on the same suborbital trajectory as that of Ship.<\/p>\n Flight 11 repeated those successes today.<\/p>\n The final flight of Starship V2<\/p>\n \n This split screen shows the landing of Starship Flight 11 from Ship 38 on the left, with a view of the landing in the Indian Ocean from a buoy on the right. (Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n Flight 11’s main goals were the same as those of Flight 10 \u2014 bring Super Heavy down in the Gulf and do the same with Ship off the coast of Western Australia, after an in-space Raptor relight and the deployment of eight more dummy Starlinks.<\/p>\n There were a few twists, however. For example, SpaceX employed a new landing burn strategy with Super Heavy today, trying out an engine configuration that will be used by the next-gen version of the booster.<\/p>\n “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 in a Flight 11 mission description<\/a>. “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\u2019s path, adding additional redundancy for spontaneous engine shutdowns.”<\/p>\n Flight 11 also marked the second-ever reflight of a Super Heavy: This same booster also conducted Flight 8, ending its duties that day with a return to Starbase and a chopsticks catch. SpaceX changed out just nine of its 33 Raptors ahead of today’s flight, meaning that 24 of them were flight-proven.<\/p>\n![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/6bFJvMamSwjyTRYqbHWekm.png\")
\n<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/H78zEqBbid3GwyvupDp3VL.png\")
SpaceX’s Starship Flight 11 Super Heavy booster drops away from its Ship 38 upper stage after a “hot-fire” separation.(Image credit: SpaceX)![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/EaAL9vhLZAE5qwe2jiv3yE.png\")
A view from Starship Flight 11’s Super Heavy booser just before splashdown.(Image credit: SpaceX)![\"Flat](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/tPgYxQdYvQMr3Hg4vB3UrZ.png\")
A view inside the payload bay of Starship Flight 11 Ship 38 showing the 8 Starlink satellite simulators.(Image credit: SpaceX)![\"Flat](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/4Z5XrbbWz6UJSALCapjr5a.png\")
This view shows the edge-on view of the flat Starlink demonstrators as they were ejected into space on Flight 11.(Image credit: SpaceX)![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/2Dj7d8g95EjX59JVekFFFR.png\")
A view from SpaceX’s Ship 38 during reentry on Starship Flight 11.(Image credit: SpaceX)![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/UM5q9UQKRhBuC7piHuzN9T.png\")
This view shows the six engines on Starship Flight 11’s Ship 38 during reentry.(Image credit: SpaceX)<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/aSysibMidtLSYqp655X4cJ.png\")
\n<\/p>\n