SpaceX launched its 11th test flight of the powerful Starship and Super Heavy rocket from its Texas site Starbase on Monday as it moved ahead in its goals to achieve an operational rocket that could eventually launch from Florida.<\/p>\n
Liftoff came at 7:23 p.m. EDT with the company managing a repeat of the successful 10th test flight<\/a> in August, and avoiding the calamities of its explosive test flights<\/a> earlier in the year.<\/p>\n Clear skies meant the streaking upper stage was visible from Florida creating a jellyfish effect with the setting sun and images posted to social media captured the spacecraft from the Florida Keys to as far north as Daytona Beach.<\/p>\n It was the first of two launches for SpaceX on Monday night with a Cape Canaveral mission<\/a> for Amazon lifting off at 9:58 p.m.<\/p>\n SpaceX founder Elon Musk wandered past the live commentators saying he was going outside to watch for the first time.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really going to be much more visceral,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n For the second time, SpaceX used a Super Heavy booster that had previously been flown, having been one of three times the company successfully captured the booster back at the launch site using the launch tower\u2019s \u201cchopsticks.\u201d This booster flew on Flight 8 in March<\/a> The first-ever Super Heavy booster catch came a year ago in October 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n For this flight, though, there was no retry to capture back at the tower, with the booster instead making a controlled descent with an ultimate water landing in the Gulf. The company reused 24 of the 33 Raptor engines on the booster, and adjusted its landing burn to mimic the burn planned for the next generation of Super Heavy booster.<\/p>\n This was the final flight of what SpaceX has been calling version 2 of Starship and Super Heavy, and final launch from pad 1 at Starbase.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have liftoff. Go Super Heavy. Go Starship. Thanks for all the historic flights, pad one,\u201d said flight director Ty Huntington.<\/p>\n The upper Starship stage performed the same flight plan as previous attempts, with a suborbital trip more than halfway around the Earth once again making a controlled water landing in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia.<\/p>\n SpaceX was also able to deploy payloads that simulate the size of future Starlink satellites. The eight simulators had a smooth deployment designed to follow the upper stage\u2019s trajectory and burn up on reentry. The company also was able to once again relight one of the six Raptor engines on the upper stage midflight.<\/p>\n The Starlink-powered video used during the flight gave pristine video of the ship\u2019s reentry as it came to near the same landing spot as it did on the 10th flight.<\/p>\n \u201cToday we launched the world\u2019s biggest rocket, knocked out all of our objectives. Shout outs to every single person who made this look easy,\u201d said SpaceX commentator Dan Huot. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna see you back here for the very first flight of our next generation Starship.\u201d<\/p>\n Starship is the most powerful rocket to ever make it to space with nearly 17 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, which is nearly double the power of NASA\u2019s Space Launch System rocket<\/a> used on Artemis missions.<\/p>\n Future test flights aim to bring the Starship upper stage back to Texas for a controlled landing that would recover the vehicle, part of the company\u2019s plans for a fully reusable rocket.<\/p>\n The company is in the midst of building out launch sites<\/a> at both Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station that could handle as many as 120 launches a year, if approved by the Federal Aviation Administration. Construction of a Starship manufacturing site at KSC called the \u201cGigabay,\u201d is underway, part of a $1.8 billion infrastructure<\/a> project to support Space Coast launches.<\/p>\n