Elon Musk’s Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built, has successfully completed its 11th test flight with green lights across the board.
The mission included ocean landings for both the Booster and Starship upper stage, deployment of dummy payloads in orbit, an engine re-light during the coast phase, and a full test of Starship’s heat-shield tiles during re-entry.
Following on from the success of flight 10, flight 11 used a previously flown Booster fitted with 24 flight-proven Raptor engines. As Starship is designed for multiple re-flights, this marks another important step in proving the system’s reusability.
Flight 11 is also the final outing for the Block 2 Starship (upper stage) and Booster (lower stage) hardware, as SpaceX transitions to the upgraded Block 3 versions. Block 3 will incorporate refinements from earlier tests, and a launch could occur before the end of the year.
The flight followed a similar plan to flight 10, including offshore landings for both stages. With three successful Booster catches already achieved using its giant “Mechazilla” catch tower, SpaceX avoided risking damage to its main launch pad this time. Future catch tests will use the Block 3 vehicles and the newly built launch tower.
A key change this time was a new landing burn profile, using five engines during the divert phase instead of three. This tested finer trajectory control and provided extra redundancy in case of engine shutdowns.
Although some heat-shield tiles were lost during re-entry, there were few other visible issues, unlike the engine skirt damage seen on Starship 37 during flight 10.
SpaceX now has another treasure trove of data to analyse as it prepares the Block 3 Starship and finalises configuration of its new Launch Pad 2 at Starbase, Boca Chica, Texas. Congratulations to the SpaceX team on another major milestone!
The post Elon Musk’s Starship completes flawless flight 11 mission appeared first on GadgetGuy.
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