Article cover: Article cover: SpaceX’s Starship Flight Test 11, Elon Musk crashing the live broadcast (Ren@art, SpaceX, 13 October 2025).
SpaceX’s Starship Flight Test 11 launched on 13 October 2025. The test was a tremendous success, collecting all the data that it aimed at and demonstrating the viability of changes made to the ship to test for endurance in real flight.
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Updates
14 October 2025: Starship after Flight Test 11.Background
Starship Flight Test 11.Launch broadcast and flight events.
Starship development.
The future of Starship tests.
Watch the launch broadcast.
UPDATE
Future of Starship
– 14 October 2025
SpaceX announced on their post-launch comment “Focus now turns to the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy, with multiple vehicles currently in active build and preparing for tests. This next iteration will be used for the first Starship orbital flights, operational payload missions, propellant transfer, and more as we iterate to a fully and rapidly reusable vehicle with service to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and beyond”.
Michael Wall, Senior Space Writer at Space.com, quoted Elon Musk “Starship V3 will be capable of flying to Mars and may well do so next year, if testing continues to go well” (www.space.com, 2025)
BACKGROUND
Starship Flight Test 11
Test 11 consisted of Block 2 Starship vehicle, which included Booster 15 and Ship 38.
Booster 15 had flown before in “Flight Test 8” and was refurbished with 24 flight-proven engines and tested. While Ship 38 was constructed for this purpose and underwent cryogenic tests that started in July. Static engine fire testing was completed in late September.
Successful static burn test of Booster (left) and Ship in September 2025 (SpaceX, 13 October 2025).
Testing goals
- Booster: The booster aimed at demonstrating a unique landing burn using the three central engines and two from the inner ring to fine-tune the booster’s path, adding redundancy for unexpected engine shutdowns. To hover over the ocean the booster aims at using the three central engines.
- Load: The ship aimed at deploying 8 Starlink simulators (successfully demonstrated in flight 10). The simulators will follow the same re-entry path and get destroyed as they enter the atmosphere.
- Engines: As on previous tests, a raptor engine was re-lit in space.
- Flight: A banking manoeuvre was tested at subsonic speeds before Ship attempted a vertical landing on the Indian Ocean.
- Shell: To allow for metal expansion and contraction during flight, Starship’s hexagonal tiles have a small gap between them, which lets some of the plasma seep onto Starship’s walls. Test 11 had a modification to the heatshield using Crunch-Wrap, a pliable material called Vulcan Felt that wraps around the underside and free edges of each tile closing the gaps between them, therefore improving the shielding effect. Like in previous test flights, some tiles were removed to test specific zones for stress.
Flight Test 11 - Launch
The launch event was hosted by Jake Berkowitz, Lead Propulsion Engineer, Amanda Lee, Build Reliability Engineer, Dan Huot, Communications, and Tyler Lionquist, Starlink Business Analyst, who presented sections on Starlink.
Flight Test 11. Hosts of live broadcast: Jake Berkowitz, Amanda Lee, Dan Huot and Tyler Lionquist (SpaceX, 2025).
Weather conditions were monitored closely at launch site and over the Indian Ocean. The mission had optimal weather for launch with clear cloudless skies.
An hour before launch, the propellent tanks are filled in the booster and the ship. The tanks need to be chilled to hold 5,000 Tons of Oxygen and Methane, the liquid propellants used by Starship.
Launch and ascent went exceptionally well, followed by stage separation. This was the last launch from Pad 1, a launch site that has part of historic flights for SpaceX. Future launches will be from the new and improved Pad 2 (see Future Plans below).
Flight Test 11: Launch and ascent from Boca Chica, Texas (SpaceX, 13 October 2025).
Flight Test 11: Ship 38 ascending and looking down at launch pad (SpaceX, 13 October 2025).
Stage separation burn and Hot Stage separated from the booster as both fall down towards the surface (SpaceX, 13 October 2025).
The Super Heavy Booster directed its trajectory using the grid flaps towards a precise location on the Gulf of America, water-landing with now reliable precision. A new V configuration of engine activation was tested successfully for the landing burn.
Booster landing burn and splashdown on the Gulf of America (SpaceX, 13 October 2025).
While in lower orbit, at around 21 minutes after launch, Ship opened its side door and deployed 8 satellite simulators in a slow but steady sequence that went without issues. This is an important test in preparation of the deployment of up to 60 satellites per flight, greatly increasing the capacity of the Starlink Network.
Satellite simulators released through Ship’s side port (SpaceX, 13 October 2025).
The next event was the test of lighting up a raptor engine while in space. This is a crucial function that needs to be reliable to initiate de-orbit of future mission. All 3 tests carried out in various missions since Flight 6 were completed as expected.
Re-lighting of Raptor engine in the vacuum of space (SpaceX, 13 October 2025).
Re-entry is the peak test of the structure of the ship travelling at 8km/sec as it plunges into the progressively denser atmosphere. Heat is generated by friction of air particles against the ceramic tiles that cover the underside of the ship, generating large amounts of energy in the form of plasma. Communications that normally break up, were maintained thanks to the Starlink satellite network, allowing direct view of the testing that included removal of tiles in crucial area to test full exposure of the stainless-steel hull to extreme temperatures.
Re-entry with creation of plasma. Once in the atmosphere, the ship prepared for landing with a flip from horizontal to vertical (SpaceX, 13 October 2025).
Ship approached the Indian Ocean at the calculated location, and the landing burn went as expected splashing down in a vertical position, culminating a tremendously successful Flight Test 11. The crowds of technicians at SpaceX celebrated the achievement, a result of their hard work.
Ship’s landing burn and splashdown. SpaceX staff celebrating their achievement (SpaceX, 13 October 2025).
Watch the Starship’s descent and splash down in high definition (1m).
Starship development
A comparison between Starship and the largest commercial airline, the Boeing 747 shows that the height of the booster alone is 5 metres short of the length of the airplane and when put together, the final height of Starship at 123metres is more than 150% taller than the Boeing 747. A single raptor engine produces double the thrust of all four engines and the total thrust of the booster with 33 engines reaches 17 million pounds of force that equals to the power of 64 Boeing 747s.
Comparison of Starship features with Boeing 747 (SpaceX, 2025).
While the booster or first stage has engines that run on liquid Methane and liquid Oxygen, the Starship upper or second stage has 6 engines, of which 3 are optimised for sea level performance and 3 for vacuum work. This stage is designed to eventually carry cargo, payloads and people to space and return.
Starlink simulators are a test version of the new V3 satellites that will increase the performance of the Starlink network to downlink capacity of 60 Tb/sec per launch and provide Gigabit connectivity to users, which is 20 times more than Falcon 9 launches achieve today. Although only 8 simulators are used for testing, when fully operational, Starship will hold and deploy up to 60 satellites per flight.
Starlink is the largest sub-orbital communications network in the world. It serves more than 150 countries with over 7 million customers.
Evolution in size and capacity of Starlink Satellites (SpaceX, 2025).
Between the stages there is a hot-stage steel ring which acts as a launch base for the second stage during ascent. This ring falls onto the ocean (Gulf of America) at very high speeds (about 30-50 km/sec) and is recovered by a team of divers and a boat. In the future it will be integrated into the top of the booster.
Hot Stage Ring located between the Booster and the Ship (SpaceX, 2025).
Recovery of hot stage from the Gulf of America (Starship Gazer, YouTube, 23oct2025).
The future of Starship testing
- Launch pad: Launch pad 2 is being built with a new tower for future launches and catches. Located next to Pad 1 (built in 2019), Orbital Launch Pad 2 (OLP-2) has multiple key enhancements, including structural optimisation for future heavy-lift missions and to ensure quick turnaround between launches, which includes more sophisticated ground support systems. More facilities for static engine testing and checks, minimised environmental impact.
Launch Pad 2 is an improved launch platform built next to Pad 1 in Boca Chica, Texas (nasaspaceflight.com, 2025).
- Booster: The booster has a re-designed fuel transfer tube that runs in the centre of the body to allow better flip and simultaneous engine startup. The hot-stage ring will now be integrated onto the top of the booster, becoming fully re-usable, with enhanced ventilation to diverge heat away from the fuel tanks.
- Grid fins: Grid fins will be 50% larger and reduce from 4 to 3 and will be reinforced to be used for catching.
- Engines: A new version of engine, the Raptor 3 with simplified configuration providing more power and better gimble or steering.
- Tiles: Production of each tile takes about 40 hours at the Tile Bakery, which is is now fully automated and outputs 1,000 tiles a day. To cover the needs of future multiple daily flights, the bakery aims at producing 7,000 tiles daily.
Concept of docking adaptors connecting starships in the future (SpaceX, 2025).
- M & M: SpaceX is planning on reaching the moon with Starship carrying cargo by 2028 and two years later, land on Mars. SpaceX has secured the first customer, the Italian Space Agency, what will send experiments to Mars. More news about going to Mars available at www.spacex.com/humanspaceflight/ (link opens on a new tab or window).
Launch broadcast – 13 October 2025
Watch the full launch broadcast on SpaceX’s Launches page (1h 43m).
Link to SpaceX’s Launches page to watch the broadcast of Flight Test 11 from 13 October 2025 (SpaceX, 2025). (Click the image to open the link in a new tab or window).
REFERENCES
» SpaceX (2025) Mars and beyond [Online]. Available at X.com. Accessed: 17 October 2025.
» SpaceX (2025) Starship’s Eleventh Flight Test. SpaceX [Online article]. Available at SpaceX. Accessed: 30 August 2025.
» Starship Gazer (2024) Recovery of hot stage from the Gulf of America (23 October 2024). [Online video]. Available at YouTube. Accessed: 30 August 2025.
» Wall M (2025) Getting even bigger: What’s next for SpaceX’s Starship after Flight 11 success. Space.com [Online]. Available at Space.com. Accessed: 10 December 2025.
» Wikipedia (2025) Starship flight test 11. Wikipedia [Online article]. Available at Wikipedia. Accessed: 15 October 2025.
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