Elon Musk’s commercial spaceflight company is gearing for its fifth flight test of 2025 for a spacecraft that could one day ferry astronauts to the moon and Mars.<\/p>\n
We’re potentially less than two weeks away from witnessing SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket soar once again<\/a> halfway around the world.<\/p>\n The commercial spaceflight company, founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk<\/a>, has announced that it is gearing for its fifth flight test of 2025 for a spacecraft that could one day ferry astronauts to the surface of the moon<\/a> \u2013 and even Mars<\/a>.<\/p>\n The launch, scheduled for mid-October from the company’s Texas launch site, would come less than two months after SpaceX conducted its most successful Starship test of the year<\/a>. Prior to the August launch, the vehicle’s 10th overall test flight since April 2023<\/a>, SpaceX had struggled with three consecutive untimely explosions of Starship’s upper stage<\/a> while falling well short of its past successes.<\/p>\n Looking ahead, Musk has often indicated his desire to ramp up the frequency of tests for the world’s largest rocket after receiving key federal approval to do so.<\/p>\n Here’s everything to know about SpaceX’s upcoming launch of the Starship spacecraft<\/a>, a mission known as flight 11.<\/p>\n When is Starship flight 11 launch date? Here’s what SpaceX is planning<\/p>\n SpaceX is targeting Oct. 13 for Starship’s next test flight from its\u00a0sprawling Starbase<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 the complex that doubles as a\u00a0Texas city and the company’s headquarters<\/a> in South Texas.<\/p>\n The launch window is due to open at 7:15 p.m. ET, with a webcast beginning 30 minutes prior to that, SpaceX announced<\/a> Monday, Sept. 29.<\/p>\n This time around, SpaceX plans to use the flight test to gather data to inform the design of the next iteration of its lower-stage\u00a0rocket booster<\/a>, known as Super Heavy, while stress-testing the upper-stage vehicle’s heatshield. The company also detailed plans for the upper stage, simply known as Starship, to attempt mid-flight maneuvers that will be necessary for it to one day be capable of returning and landing back at the launch site.<\/p>\n The upper stage is intended to land once again in the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n For the second time ever, SpaceX also plans to use a Super Heavy booster that has flown on a previous Starship flight<\/a> test. Additionally, 24 of its 33 engines in the SpaceX Raptor family will be “flight proven,” SpaceX said.<\/p>\n For the third time in a row, the booster will not return to the launch site<\/a>, instead landing in the Gulf of Mexico, renamed by the U.S. government as the Gulf of America, as SpaceX attempts to push its performance beyond what has so far been attempted.<\/p>\n Was the last Starship launch successful?<\/p>\n SpaceX’s previous Starship launch Aug. 26<\/a> \u2013 coming on the heels of three consecutive flights in which the vehicle exploded prematurely \u2013 was also its most successful test of the vehicle in 2025.<\/p>\n In that test, the upper stage, the vehicle known as Starship, separated from the rocket booster about three minutes into the flight to continue on its own on a suborbital trajectory. After that, the vehicle hit two major milestones<\/a> by deploying eight mock Starlink satellites and reigniting one of its Raptor engines<\/a>\u00a0in space for the second time ever \u2013 a necessary maneuver to bring a vehicle back to the ground.<\/p>\n Re-entering Earth’s atmosphere\u00a0about an hour into the mission over the Indian Ocean<\/a>, Starship then fired its engines to make\u00a0a controlled vertical landing on the ocean’s surface west of Australia before exploding in a fireball.<\/p>\n As for Super Heavy, the rocket booster made a water landing as planned off Texas coast after completing several in-flight experiments.<\/p>\n What is Starship? Rocket bound for moon, Mars<\/p>\n SpaceX is developing\u00a0Starship<\/a>\u00a0to be a fully reusable transportation system, meaning the rocket and vehicle can return to the ground for additional missions.<\/p>\n In the years ahead, Starship is\u00a0set to serve a pivotal role in future U.S. spaceflight.<\/p>\n Starship is the centerpiece of\u00a0Musk’s\u00a0vision of sending the first humans to Mars<\/a>, with plans for the first uncrewed Starship to head to the Red Planet as early as 2026.<\/p>\n A configuration of the vehicle is also critical in NASA’s plans to\u00a0return astronauts to the moon’s surface<\/a>. The U.S. space agency has designs on using Starship to\u00a0ferry Artemis III astronauts from an Orion capsule in orbit to the lunar surface<\/a>\u00a0as early as 2027.<\/p>\n How big is Starship?<\/p>\n The Starship,\u00a0standing 403 feet tall when fully stacked<\/a>, is regarded as the world’s largest and most powerful launch vehicle ever developed. When fully integrated, the launch system is\u00a0composed of both a 232-foot Super Heavy rocket and the 171-foot upper stage Starship, the spacecraft where crew and cargo would ride.<\/p>\n Super Heavy alone is powered by 33 of SpaceX\u2019s Raptor engines that give the initial burst of thrust at liftoff. The upper stage Starship section is powered by six Raptor engines that will ultimately travel in orbit.<\/p>\n Where is SpaceX located in Texas? What to know about Starbase<\/p>\n Starbase is SpaceX’s company town built<\/a>\u00a0about 23 miles from Brownsville in South Texas. The site is located in Cameron County near the U.S.-Mexico border.<\/p>\n As the headquarters for the commercial spaceflight company<\/a>, Starbase is home to SpaceX’s rocket program and is where the vehicles are both built\u00a0and often launched.<\/p>\n Starbase made news in May 2025 when Texas voters in Cameron County\u00a0approved a measure to officially\u00a0recognize the company’s headquarters as its own town<\/a>, complete with a mayor and city council. The\u00a0city designation<\/a>\u00a0has been speculated to give greater municipal control of the area to Musk, who\u00a0has regularly clashed with government regulators<\/a>\u00a0over the red tape SpaceX has had to navigate before launches.<\/p>\n Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk’s commercial spaceflight company is gearing for its fifth flight test of 2025 for a spacecraft that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[1204,5007,9115,582,1331,2006,4621,1208,841,18,13779,1647,1205,13780,13781,1219,1233,19,17,1212,9117,526,1228,1203,1223,1216,1231,10626,10630,11257,1024,7980,1218,1232,1221,5,1207,1226,713,1234,583,1215,9116,9129,3021,133,1220,451,1227,1224,1225,1235,2731,1217,82,455,2461,1214,1213,1230,835,1209,1229,1206,1211,1210],"class_list":{"0":"post-97889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-planet","9":"tag-administration","10":"tag-astronauts","11":"tag-astronomy","12":"tag-aviation","13":"tag-company","14":"tag-company-news","15":"tag-connect","16":"tag-content","17":"tag-eire","18":"tag-elon","19":"tag-elon-musk","20":"tag-exploration","21":"tag-federal","22":"tag-federal-aviation-administration","23":"tag-fl","24":"tag-fl-content-sharing-space","25":"tag-ie","26":"tag-ireland","27":"tag-know","28":"tag-launches","29":"tag-local","30":"tag-local-connect","31":"tag-mars","32":"tag-mars-planet","33":"tag-modular","34":"tag-modular-story","35":"tag-moon","36":"tag-moon-natural-satellite","37":"tag-musk","38":"tag-nasa","39":"tag-natural","40":"tag-network","41":"tag-network-trending","42":"tag-neutral","43":"tag-news","44":"tag-outer","45":"tag-outer-space","46":"tag-overall","47":"tag-overall-neutral","48":"tag-planets","49":"tag-point","50":"tag-rocket","51":"tag-rocket-launches","52":"tag-satellite","53":"tag-science","54":"tag-sharing","55":"tag-space","56":"tag-space-connect","57":"tag-space-exploration","58":"tag-space-exploration-vehicles","59":"tag-space-technology","60":"tag-spacex","61":"tag-story","62":"tag-technology","63":"tag-technology-news","64":"tag-texas","65":"tag-the","66":"tag-to","67":"tag-to-the-point","68":"tag-trending","69":"tag-ttp","70":"tag-ttp-what-we-know","71":"tag-vehicles","72":"tag-we","73":"tag-what"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}