SpaceX set to launch Starship megarocket’s 11th test flight

The current SpaceX facility on Launchpad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, maintains the company's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.

SpaceX has truly eye-popping plans for Starship.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has even said that he hopes SpaceX will one day be launching its Starship megarocket as many as 10 to 24 times per day — or once an hour — as the company chases dreams like establishing a human settlement on Mars.

To hit that type of launch rate, SpaceX will need to expand Starship’s launch facilities outside of its current home base in Texas.

That’s why the company is already building a new launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

But before SpaceX can attempt to launch its megarocket from the famed Space Coast, regulators need to give final approval. Last month, the Federal Aviation Administration asked for input from the Florida public on the matter. And a lot of locals aren’t happy.

Residents are concerned about the disruptive sonic booms associated with Starship flights — which can be as loud as gunshots and may cause minor damage to buildings. Others, including a nudist recreation group, are worried about local beach closures that may result from SpaceX’s launch rate.

“It would be a disaster,” one resident said during the hearing. “And the whole beach and everything would be closed. The turtles would be gone. So I presume from all this that the focus is on the money, the economics, and not on anything else.”

Roughly 25 people spoke during a two-hour virtual hearing about the plan on September 3. About 20 of those people expressed concerns or outright opposition.

SpaceX Starship's Super Heavy rocket lands during its eighth test flight on March 6.

SpaceX has so far safely landed Super Heavy rocket boosters after three of its 10 test flights. And the company is already taking steps toward beginning to reuse the rocket parts it recovers.

The ninth Starship test flight in May marked the first time the company reused a booster. And SpaceX will repeat the approach today, using the Super Heavy booster that flew during Flight 8 in March.

On this flight, 24 of the 33 engines that sit at the base of Super Heavy will be embarking on their second journey.

“Its primary test objective will be demonstrating a unique landing burn engine configuration planned to be used on the next generation Super Heavy,” SpaceX said of the booster in a statement.

SpaceX eventually hopes to rapidly reuse the entire Super Heavy booster — taking it from landing to launch as smoothly as an airplane between legs of a flight.

SpaceX does not appear to be tracking any significant technical issues or other scenarios that could prohibit takeoff this evening.

Launch controllers just gave the green light to begin loading up the 400-foot-tall rocket and spacecraft system with fuel.

The vehicle can hold a combined total of 11 million pounds of propellant — which includes methane (the fuel) and oxygen (the oxidizer).

Both the methane and oxygen are kept at super-cold temperatures so they are loaded in liquid — or cryogenic — form.

A mural photographed on April 17 outside of the SpaceX Starbase complex near Brownsville, Texas, depicts rockets on Mars.

While NASA and its policymakers and stakeholders continue to ring alarm bells — emphasizing that Starship needs to be ready to land astronauts on the moon before China gets there — SpaceX has its sights set farther in the solar system.

On company livestreams of Starship tests, the moon is rarely mentioned. (During the August test mission, the words “moon” and “lunar” were used once each while Mars was referenced 35 times.)

That’s because, for SpaceX, Starship has always been a vehicle designed for exploring the red planet, not the moon. For more than a decade, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has made it clear that his driving mission is to land humans on Mars for the first time and eventually establish a permanent base there.

NASA gave SpaceX’s Starship a $2.8 billion contract to help with its moon landing goals in 2021 — hoping to take advantage of the immense time and resources SpaceX was already pouring into the development of the gargantuan launch system.

A Gravity-1 rocket lifts off from a launch ship in the waters off Haiyang in China's eastern Shandong province on Saturday.

There has been a lot of talk about beating China to the moon lately.

In September, a Senate subcommittee even hosted an entire hearing about it, dubbing the session “There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise” after the Creedence Clearwater Revival lyric.

The concern with reaching the moon before China stems in part from a fear that China will begin claiming territory, though such a move would likely violate international treaties that have been in place for decades.

For example: NASA Administrator Sean Duffy earlier this year directed the agency to fast-track plans to put a nuclear power plant on the lunar surface, saying he was concerned China may one day declare a lunar “keep-out zone.”

Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine testifies before a Senate committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on September 30, 2020.

NASA is banking on SpaceX getting Starship ready in time to land its astronauts on the moon during a mission slated for mid-2027.

That effort, called Artemis III, is at the heart of the US government’s plans to beat China — its biggest rival in the new space race — to the lunar surface.

And public officials, space industry leaders and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have been putting mounting emphasis on the importance of this goal.

Not everyone is happy about SpaceX’s involvement. Former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, who led the agency during Trump’s first term, said at a Senate hearing in September that he disagreed with the space agency’s decision to give SpaceX the $2.8 billion contract for Artemis III.

“This is an architecture that no NASA administrator that I’m aware of would have selected had they had the choice,” Bridenstine said, referring to the decision to use Starship as the vehicle that will land astronauts on the moon, which was made in 2021 when NASA was without a Senate-confirmed leader.

That sentiment has since been echoed in various corners of the space world.

During a September meeting of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, member Paul Hill, who visited SpaceX’s Starship development facilities in August, said the timeline for Starship readiness is “significantly challenged.”

The ASAP panel expects the vehicle will be “years late” to the 2027 deadline, Hill said.

So far, however, there are no signs that NASA intends to change its plans.

Orange balls of light fly across the sky as debris from a SpaceX rocket launched in Texas is spotted over Turks and Caicos Islands on January 16.

SpaceX debuted the current generation of Starship vehicles in January, following a clean run of test missions with a slightly scaled-down version of the rocket in 2024.

But 2025 has proven to be a very trying year for the program.

During two separate test flights in January and March, the vehicle exploded near populated islands east of Florida, creating debris that hit roadways in Turks and Caicos and washed up onto Bahamian islands.

On another test flight in May, the launch system performed notably better, but the Starship spacecraft ultimately spun out of control as it headed toward its landing site. Even the Super Heavy booster, which was meant to make a controlled splashdown in the Gulf, was smashed into smithereens.

Following those three incidents — each of which triggered months-long investigations overseen by federal regulators — SpaceX hit another setback when a Starship spacecraft exploded during a ground test in June.

Engineers likely breathed a deep sigh of relief when the last test flight in August appeared to go smoothly, concluding with controlled splashdowns of both the Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft.

Still, the company has long sung the same refrain about errors during test missions: “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn.”

That’s because SpaceX employs an engineering approach called “rapid iterative development,” which emphasizes building relatively low-cost prototypes and launching frequent test flights.

The goal? Hash out rocket designs faster and at cheaper price points, rather than relying on slower, more methodical engineering approaches.

Mexican environmentalists protest aboard a boat near SpaceX’s Starbase launch site on the south Texas coast, citing concerns over space debris and the environmental impact of past launches, as the company called off its tenth Starship mission due to a site issue, offshore from Matamoros, Mexico, on August 24.

Ahead of Starship’s last test flight in August, a group of demonstrators took to small boats in the Gulf waters just south of the launchpad.

Organized by Conibio Global, an NGO based in Mexico that has vocally opposed SpaceX’s impact on the local ecosystem, the protestors aimed to stay out of the way of launch operations but to make their presence and opposition known, they told CNN.

But during one launch attempt, the group said two helicopters of unknown origin “descended aggressively and in an intimidating manner, generating powerful air blasts that caused instability in our vessels, directly endangering the physical integrity of the Conibio Global team and the media present.”

US authorities reached by CNN did not respond to requests for comment on the matter.

The group is once again expected to show up during today’s launch attempt, according to a notice published to Facebook on October 8.

Because of the helicopter incident in August, the notice states, “we have established communication with the Consulate and Embassy of the United States of America in order to formally document the occurrence.

“At the same time, these actions compel us to reinforce our demonstration with evasive preventive measures—always within a peaceful framework and with full respect for the rule of law,” the group said.

SpaceX Starship sits on the launchpad near Brownsville, Texas, on Monday.

SpaceX’s 400-foot-tall (122-meter) megarocket, Starship, is back on the launchpad for another test flight after a fairly chaotic year.

It all started when SpaceX debuted the current iteration of Starship — Version 2 — in January, kicking off a brutal seven-month stretch marked by three in-flight failures and an explosion during routine ground tests.

A welcome moment of redemption came in August with the first successful hour-long test flight of a Version 2 vehicle. SpaceX will be looking to repeat that achievement today as the company gears up to introduce another, scaled-up version of Starship next year.

Here’s a quick look at what’s ahead for today’s test mission: