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SpaceX rolls the Starship Flight 11 Stout Heavy booster to the launch pad at its Starbase save in South Texas. SpaceX posted this photo on X on Oct. 8, 2025.
(Image credit: SpaceX)
The first stage of SpaceX’s Starship megarocket has made it to the launch pad ahead of subsequent week’s test flight.
On Wednesday (Oct. 8), SpaceX posted photos on X showing the giant booster, identified as Stout Heavy, making the pass to the orbital launch mount at the firm’s Starbase save in South Texas.
It’s fragment of the leadup to Starship‘s 11th test flight, which is scheduled for Monday (Oct. 13) at 7:15 p.m. EDT (2315 GMT). You can be ready to explore the action dwell right here at Area.com, courtesy of SpaceX.
The Flight 11 Stout Heavy is placed atop Starbase’s orbital launch mount by the tower’s “chopstick” hands. (Image credit: SpaceX)
Starship is the ideally suited and strongest rocket ever constructed. The novel iteration stands about 400 toes (121 meters) unprecedented, and future versions will be bigger smooth, according to firm founder and CEO Elon Musk.
The automobile consists of two aspects — Stout Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft identified as Starship, or Ship for quick. Both are powered by SpaceX’s Raptor engines — 33 for Stout Heavy and six for Ship — and are designed to be completely and rapidly reusable.
Stout Heavy’s Raptors rob center stage in a single of the newly released photos, which specializes within the booster’s base as it be placed atop the launch mount.
Stout Heavy has a whopping 33 Raptor engines. (Image credit: SpaceX)
The concept for Starship Flight 11 is similar to that of Flight 10, which launched on Aug. 26 and became once a entire success.
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As on that day, Stout Heavy will come again to Earth for a controlled splashdown within the Gulf of Mexico. This would per chance be the 2d reentry for this specific booster, which additionally launched on Starship Flight 8 this previous March. That mission featured a procure of the booster by the Starbase launch tower’s “chopstick” hands, that’s no longer going to happen on Flight 11.
Ship, within the intervening time, will deploy eight payloads into problem on Flight 11 — dummy versions of SpaceX’s Starlink web satellites — and wrap issues up by splashing down within the Indian Ocean.
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Michael Wall is a Senior Area Writer with Area.com and joined the group of workers in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military problem, nonetheless has been identified to dabble within the train art beat. His guide about the quest for alien life, “Out There,” became once printed on Nov. 13, 2018. Prior to changing into a science creator, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the College of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor’s stage from the College of Arizona, and a graduate certificates in science writing from the College of California, Santa Cruz. To discover what his most modern project is, you must observe Michael on Twitter.
