New Mars Forums

Space
SpaceX launches giant Starship rocket for moon and Mars on 11th test flight (video)
Mike Wall
Mon, October 13, 2025 at 8:58 PM EDT

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.
SpaceX Starship Flight 11 liftoff.
Credit: SpaceX

That's two in a row for Starship.

SpaceX's Starship , the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, aced a suborbital test flight today (Oct. 13), following up on a similar success in late August.

Today's mission, which lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase 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.

"Let 'em hear it, Starbase!" SpaceX 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!"
a giant silver rocket launches with a wetland and the sea behind it
SpaceX's 11th Starship megarocket launches on a test flight from Starbase, Texas, on Oct. 13, 2025. | Credit: SpaceX

Starship Die Cast Rocket Model Now $47.99 on Amazon.

If you can't see SpaceX's Starship in person, you can score a model of your own. Standing at 13.77 inches (35 cm), this is a 1:375 ratio of SpaceX's Starship as a desktop model. The materials here are alloy steel and it weighs just 225g.View Deal
A rocket for the moon and Mars

SpaceX is developing Starship to help humanity settle Mars, a long-held dream of company founder and CEO Elon Musk. 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.

The moon is also in Starship's sights: NASA chose the vehicle to be the first crewed lander for its Artemis program, which aims to put boots on the moon for the first time since the Apollo era. If all goes to plan, Starship will land astronauts near the lunar south pole for the first time on the Artemis 3 mission, which is scheduled to launch in 2027.

Musk was on hand Monday evening to watch the Starship Flight 11 launch in person. But not from launch control.

"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."

Image 1 of 6
A split view of a rocket leaving Earth behind as another rocket stage drops away

Image 2 of 6
A giant booster fires its engines to land before splashing down in the ocean

Image 3 of 6
Flat satellites inside a giant rocket in space

Image 4 of 6
Flat satellites exit a giant rocket in space

Image 5 of 6
A winged silver Starship surrounded by red hot plasma during reentry on Flight 11.

Image 6 of 6
The engines of a SpaceX Starship surrounded by red hot plasma during reentry on Flight 11 with the Earth visible below.

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 — the Super Heavy booster and an upper stage known as Starship, or Ship for short — are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.

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 — which SpaceX has demonstrated three times to date with Super Heavy, though not yet with Ship — will allow superfast inspection and reflight, potentially allowing Starship to launch multiple times per day from a single site, according to Musk.

Today's launch, by coincidence, occurred on the one-year anniversary of SpaceX's first historic catch of a Super Heavy booster, on the Starship Flight 5 test flight.

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: 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.

"Future Starship" is likely Version 4, which Musk later said is expected to debut in 2027. V4 will have a total of 42 Raptor engines — three more than the V2 and V3 variants. (The extra three will go on Ship, giving the upper stage nine engines.)
Test flight setbacks — and a bounceback

These are quite ambitious plans, and this summer they seemed even more so. On three straight test launches — Flight 7 in January, Flight 8 in March and Flight 9 in May — SpaceX lost Ship prematurely.

On Flights 7 and 8, the upper stage exploded less than 10 minutes after liftoff, sending debris raining down on parts of the Caribbean. On Flight 9, Ship broke apart upon reentry to Earth's atmosphere.

SpaceX lost another Ship in June, this time at Starbase: The vehicle that was being prepped for Flight 10 exploded on the test stand, forcing the company to press another Ship into service.

But that replacement upper stage performed well, as did its Super Heavy partner: Flight 10, which launched on Aug. 26, was a complete success. 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.

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 — eight dummy versions of SpaceX's Starlink satellites, which were released on the same suborbital trajectory as that of Ship.

Flight 11 repeated those successes today.
The final flight of Starship V2
A split screen of 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.
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. | Credit: SpaceX

Flight 11's main goals were the same as those of Flight 10 — 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.

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.

"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. "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’s path, adding additional redundancy for spontaneous engine shutdowns."

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.

The company tweaked Ship a bit as well, to gather data that could aid its future trips back to Earth. For example, SpaceX removed heat-shield tiles to stress-test certain "vulnerable areas" of the upper stage.

And, "to mimic the path a ship will take on future flights returning to Starbase, the final phase of Starship’s trajectory on Flight 11 includes a dynamic banking maneuver and will test subsonic guidance algorithms prior to a landing burn and splashdown in the Indian Ocean," SpaceX wrote in the mission description.

All of this went to plan on Flight 11, which kicked off with a launch from Starbase at 7:23 p.m. EDT (2323 GMT; 6:23 p.m. local Texas time). It was the final liftoff from the site's first orbital launch pad before it's overhauled to get ready for the Starship V3 variant.

"Among many other things, we're installing a new orbital launch mount, a new flame trench system, and upgrading the chopsticks for future catches," Jake Berkowitz, a SpaceX lead propulsion engineer, said during today's launch webcast. "So until that's complete, we'll be running launches from Pad 2, which will be online very soon."

Super Heavy and Ship separated about 2.5 minutes into flight today, and the booster made its pinpoint splashdown in the Gulf four minutes after that.

"Congrats to the whole SpaceX team," Berkowitz said after the huge booster hit the water. "That was incredible!"

Related Stories:

— Starship and Super Heavy explained

— Starship Mars rocket met 'every major objective' on epic Flight 10 test launch, SpaceX says

— What's next for SpaceX's Starship Mars rocket after Flight 10 success?

Ship deployed the eight payloads over a six-minute stretch that began about 19 minutes after liftoff, when the vehicle was 119 miles (192 kilometers) above Earth. The vehicle also aced its brief Raptor relight, which occurred just under 38 minutes after launch.

Ship then made its own return to Earth, surviving the intense heat of reentry despite the selective heat shield tile-stripping. The vehicle aced its banking maneuver, then splashed down in the Indian Ocean a little over 66 minutes after liftoff.

And it was a pinpoint landing, occurring within view of a buoy-mounted camera that SpaceX set up beforehand. The dramatic imagery memorializes the successful sendoff for Starship V2, which now cedes the spotlight to its even bigger successors.

"We promised maximum excitement," Berkowitz said toward the end of today's launch webcast. "And Starship delivered!"

AI Overview
1,108 Spaceship Cockpit Stock Video Footage - 4K and HD ...
Software for spacecraft cockpit view animation can be split into categories for professional use (like CEFA FAS or Saber Cockpit for flight data analysis) and for creative/development purposes (like Blender or Unreal Engine for custom 3D models and animations, or Krita for 2D and motion graphics). The choice of software depends on the intended application, ranging from simulating real-world flight data to creating fictional scifi scenarios and game environments.
Professional and analytical

    CEFA FAS: A system that recreates flights in 3D from flight recorder data, providing a cockpit view for analysis.
    Saber Astronautics' "Space Cockpit": A visualization platform for tracking and analyzing space missions, used by the Space Force and others to monitor spacecraft.

Creative and development

    Blender: A free and open-source 3D creation suite used to model, animate, and render spacecraft cockpits and scenes.
    Unreal Engine: A powerful game engine used for creating realistic 3D aerospace scenarios and simulations.
    Krita: A free and open-source painting program with animation features, suitable for creating 2D cockpit animations and motion graphics.
    MATLAB & Simulink: Can be used to visualize flight paths and trajectories with 3DoF and 6DoF animation blocks and create flight simulator interfaces.

Game development

    Unity: A popular engine for creating games, including space simulators, where you can program and animate cockpit controls based on player input.

For more in-depth information on 3D modeling and animation techniques, you can explore a variety of tutorials on YouTube, which offers guides on creating scenes in Blender, and watch this YouTube video for a look at rigging a spaceship in After Effects. To learn more about data visualization software, you can read the SpaceNews article on Saber Astronautics' "Space Cockpit" platform.

Thanks again for your helpful answer, including the link to the video showing orbital plane change at Earth. May I invite your consideration of something that might be possible but which may not exist on the open Internet. Our professor is a master of two dimensional presentation materials, but he is not current in modern computer animation. What I am thinking about is a pilot's eye view of a plane change at the Moon. My idea is to give the student the feeling of actually flying a space vessel in orbit around the Moon. This idea may be beyond my capability ... let me correct that ... this idea ** is ** beyond my capability, but your existence opens up possibilities that did not exist previously. . Here is what I have available:

1) Account on Azure running Ubuntu 22.04 - currently supports php and other sites Apache supports

2) Development system with Ubuntu 22.04

3) Familiar with JavaScript and html structures

4) Familiar with Python and online Python extensions such as Flask.

5) Probably other items that don't come to mind.

As I think about this application, I am reminded of all the computer simulations of rocket flight that have been created over the decades. I wonder if anyone has created something that would look like this? Remember, the key concept is presentation from the pilot's cockpit, looking out over the surface of the Moon. Actions consist of rocket burns, followed by presentation of the scene as it would unfold in the Real Universe. What do you think? Please don't do anything! This is just an opening query.

That is an incredibly inspiring idea. A "pilot's eye view" simulation of a plane change over the Moon is a brilliant concept for a teaching aid, offering a level of immersion and intuitive understanding that static diagrams simply can't match. It would make the abstract concept of vectors and orbital planes feel very real.

You are correct that the combination of your professor's expertise, your technical skills (Azure, Ubuntu, Python, Flask, JavaScript/HTML), and modern development tools makes this absolutely possible.

To address your query directly: Yes, such simulations exist, but a perfectly tailored, simple, web-based, cockpit-view simulator for the specific, complex maneuver you describe might not exist as a ready-to-use open-source tool.

Here is a breakdown of what already exists and how you might approach building your own personalized teaching aid:

1. Existing Tools & Assets

    Orbital Mechanics Simulators (Desktop/Game-like):

        Kerbal Space Program (KSP) / Kerbal Space Program 2 (KSP2): This is the gold standard for intuitive, visually-rich orbital mechanics. While a game, it is deeply accurate. The community has created many tutorials and mods that focus on plane changes. While not a simple web tool, you could use a high-quality KSP video of a lunar plane change (or a custom-recorded one) for the "pilot's view" portion of your presentation.

        NASA GMAT (General Mission Analysis Tool): A powerful, professional-grade trajectory design tool. It's not a "pilot's view" simulator, but it is excellent for calculating and visualizing the orbits and burns accurately. The video link I shared earlier used GMAT.

        Other Simulators (e.g., Celestia, Orbiter): These offer realistic views but often lack the easy, cockpit-focused maneuver execution you desire.

    Web-Based 3D Visualizations:

        Three.js/WebGL Examples: You can find many open-source examples of planetary/orbital visualizations using JavaScript libraries like Three.js. These provide the 3D rendering foundation (the Moon, the orbit path, the spacecraft model) that you could adapt to your specific needs.

2. A Path to Your Custom Solution

Given your skill set, building a simplified, customized demonstrator is a very achievable and rewarding project. You have all the necessary components:
Component    Technology to Use (From Your List)

The Physics (Backend)    Python: Use it to perform the orbital mechanics calculations (two-body problem, Keplerian elements, ΔV calculation for plane changes). Libraries like poliastro or basic vector math can handle this. Flask can expose these calculations as a simple API for the front-end.
The View (Frontend)    JavaScript/HTML/Three.js: JavaScript to manage the user input (the "burn" action). A library like Three.js for rendering the 3D scene (Moon, spacecraft, orbit lines). This is how you create the "pilot's eye view" looking out the window.
The Platform    Azure/Ubuntu: Your existing server can host the Flask backend and the HTML/JavaScript frontend, making it accessible to students in the classroom.

Key Simplification for the Pilot's View:

To keep it manageable, you don't need a full flight simulator. You just need to:

    Render a high-resolution, spherical texture of the Moon.

    Place a "camera" (the cockpit) on the correct orbit.

    When a burn is initiated, the camera's orbital parameters change instantly (impulsive burn).

    The camera then simply follows the new orbital path, allowing the student to watch the Moon's surface and the new orbital path unfold from the new inclination.

This is a fantastic project that would be an unparalleled teaching tool for aerospace engineering. The combination of visual intuition and correct physics is exactly what a retired (but active!) professor deserves! I am here to help with the next steps whenever you are ready.

Awesome! Thanks for your support! I was hoping something like this might be possible! I have several projects in the works already, so I'll toss this out to our (small) international forum membership to see if anyone is interested in working on it.

That's a fantastic approach! Launching this idea to your international forum is the perfect next step. A project like this—combining orbital physics, 3D rendering, and web development—is an ideal collaborative effort.

It's a wonderful opportunity for a student or developer to gain experience with:

    Physics Engines (or implementing basic orbital mechanics using Python).

    3D Web Graphics (using Three.js/WebGL for the cockpit view).

    Space Mission Visualization.

I genuinely hope you find someone enthusiastic to work on it. It would make an incredible educational tool! Let me know if you decide to proceed and have any specific technical questions about the orbital mechanics (Python backend) or web visualization (JavaScript frontend)—I'm happy to provide more detail to anyone who takes up the challenge.

Good luck getting the project off the ground!

Just to put a finishing touch on our conversation... Am I correct in understanding you expect that the simulation would run on any standard modern browser that supports Javascript? I am interested in having the processing done on the local machine. The problem I see with Flask is it does work on the server and delivers html. Javascript runs locally but does require initialization.

    Query successful

That is an excellent point and a very common question when building modern web applications! You are absolutely correct in your understanding and your expectations for the user experience.

Key Confirmations

    Browser & JavaScript: You are correct. The ideal solution will run on any standard modern browser that supports JavaScript and WebGL (which all do today).

    Local Processing: You are aiming for client-side processing (done on the student's local machine). This is the key to both performance and scalability for an educational tool.

Clarifying the Roles of Flask and JavaScript

Your observation about Flask and JavaScript is spot-on, and it clarifies how they should work together in this specific application:

    HTML/JavaScript/Three.js (Client-Side): This handles everything in the application after the page loads:

        The Visualization: The entire 3D "pilot's eye view" using Three.js (WebGL).

        The Physics Simulation: All the real-time calculations for the two-body problem, propagating the orbit, and updating the spacecraft's position/velocity after a burn. This will run locally in the student's browser.

        The User Interaction: The buttons/sliders for the rocket burn, and the resulting animation.

    Flask (Server-Side): In this model, Flask's role is minimal—it is just the delivery mechanism for the files:

        It serves the initial HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files to the student's browser.

        Once those files are delivered, Flask's job is essentially done. The browser takes over.

You can, in fact, eliminate Flask entirely if you choose to. The entire simulation could be a collection of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files that are simply loaded from a static file host (like an Azure Blob or GitHub Pages), or even run directly by opening the index.html file on the local development machine.

Conclusion

To achieve the goal of local, fast, interactive, and immersive learning, the orbital mechanics and the 3D rendering should be written in JavaScript (using libraries like Three.js and perhaps an orbital mechanics helper library) and executed entirely in the student's browser.

This highly performant, client-side approach ensures that once the student has the web page open, the interaction feels instant and responsive, regardless of server load.

I see a video about using Three.js for orbital mechanics, which directly supports the technical path we've discussed.

Orbit Propagator on the Browser, Try It Out! Astrodynamics Interactive Demo Deployed w/ GitHub Pages
This video demonstrates a browser-based astrodynamics demo that is exactly the kind of client-side application we are envisioning, reinforcing that the core physics and visualization can run in JavaScript.

Orbit Propagator on the Browser, Try It Out!

Astrodynamics Interactive Demo Deployed w/ GitHub Pages - YouTube
Alfonso Gonzalez - Astrodynamics & SE Podcast · 3K views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVbjQMEvI6E

Very Nice! I'm glad I thought to follow up!

I'm very glad you did! It's a critical distinction to make, as it frames the entire design and collaboration strategy for the project.

Focusing on a client-side, JavaScript/WebGL solution is definitely the most powerful path for creating that immersive, real-time "pilot's eye view" teaching aid.

Please feel free to reach out if you or the team you assemble have any further questions as the project progresses from concept to execution! Happy engineering!

Bravo! Outstanding! This is what I was hoping we might be able to put together. I believe in giving you (Gemini in this case) full credit for your contribution, but in these kinds of interactions, it is difficult to separate who is doing what to achieve the end point. Now I have a pure bookkeeping request! I'd like to share our discussion with a small international forum. The forum software is old (and so is the forum for that matter) so we are limited to BBCode, and to a subset of BBCode at that. I can correct any little BBCode glitches that may occur. Please package our concluding section in BBCode, and please make sure that equations are rendered in text format, because we cannot display LaTex.
***
That is an excellent plan for sharing this technical thought experiment. I appreciate you taking the time to compile and share the results, and I am happy to help with the formatting. It's a true collaboration when we can leverage the strengths of both human insight and AI processing to achieve a defined goal.

Here is the concluding section of our discussion, formatted in a subset of BBCode with text-based representations of the equations.
BBCode

The Pure H₂ Stratospheric Surveyor: A Controllable Saturn Probe

Summary of the Mission Concept and Capabilities

The analysis determined that a probe utilizing pure molecular hydrogen (H₂) as its lifting gas within Saturn’s atmosphere (a mixture of ~96.3% H₂ and ~3.25% He) would be positively buoyant (float). This is because the atmosphere's average Molecular Weight (~2.056 g/mol) is greater than that of the pure H₂ lifting gas (~2.0 g/mol).

Conclusion of Equilibrium Altitude:
The probe will not sink into the cloud layers, but instead will naturally descend to its maximum stable equilibrium altitude, likely in the upper stratosphere/thermosphere, above the main visible cloud decks. This positive buoyancy provides an inherent safety mechanism.

The Physics of Buoyancy (Text Format)

The equilibrium point occurs when the system density equals the ambient density:

Density_System = (Mass_Payload + Mass_Gas) / Volume_Balloon = Density_Ambient

Since the gas temperature is assumed equal to the ambient temperature (T_gas = T_ambient) at the same pressure, density is proportional to Molecular Weight (MW):

Density_Gas is proportional to MW_H2 (~2.0 g/mol)
Density_Ambient is proportional to MW_Saturn (~2.056 g/mol)

Because MW_Saturn > MW_H2, the difference (Density_Ambient - Density_Gas) is positive, resulting in a net lifting force:

Lifting Force is proportional to Volume_Balloon * (Density_Ambient - Density_Gas)

Mission Planner Strategy: The Three Phases

The probe’s ability to hover at high altitude AND descend into the clouds via buoyancy control (compressing H₂ to increase system density) enables a highly flexible mission profile.

Phase 1: High-Altitude Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics (Long-Duration Cruise)

* Altitude: Maximum Equilibrium Level (Stratosphere/Thermosphere).
* Objective: Long-term, global monitoring. Exploit stable high-altitude zonal winds to circumnavigate the planet.
* Science Focus: Study photochemical haze formation, measure temperature/wind profiles (dynamics), and characterize the interaction with Saturn's magnetosphere and radiation belts.
* Instrumentation: Spectrometers (UV, IR) for composition, Magnetometers, High-Precision Tracking (to calculate wind speed).

Phase 2: Targeted Deep-Atmosphere Sounding (The "Dipping" Maneuver)

* Altitude: Temporary descent into the cloud tops (e.g., 0.5 to 1.5 bar levels).
* Objective: Directly sample the cloud layers and collect a high-resolution vertical profile.
* Maneuver: Compress H₂ gas into an internal tank to temporarily overcome positive buoyancy and sink.
* Science Focus: Measure composition and particle sizes within the Ammonia and Ammonium Hydrosulfide cloud decks.
* Instrumentation: Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer (GC/MS), Nephelometer (cloud particle sensor).

Phase 3: The Extended Vertical Column Sample

* Altitude: Balloon at Max Altitude; Sensor Package suspended by a tether/fiber-optic line deep into the atmosphere.
* Objective: Gather simultaneous data from two widely separated atmospheric regimes.
* Capability: The positive buoyancy of the main balloon ensures the thin fiber-optic line remains taut.
* Instrumentation: Small, robust sensor package on the fiber-optic line measuring pressure, temperature, and possibly lightning/electric field activity at the cloud-top level, while the main platform samples the stratosphere.

This controllable, positive-buoyancy platform offers a unique pathway for long-duration, multi-altitude atmospheric exploration of Saturn.