Starship Flight 11

Orbital Launch Pad 1 at Starbase had launched every integrated Starship since the first. After this flight it would close for retrofit to handle the larger Block 3 vehicles.

On 13 October 2025, Booster 15 — already flown on Flight 8, with twenty-four of its thirty-three Raptor 2 engines making a second flight — lifted from OLP-1 in the early evening with Ship 38 above. All engines fired through ascent. The booster completed boostback, losing and later relighting one Raptor before the landing burn, and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. Ship 38 reached the coast phase, deployed its eight Starlink simulators, and relit a single Raptor in space before reentry.

The ship's heat shield carried an experiment: several tiles had been removed in areas where the ablative backup layer was missing, to test survivability with bare steel exposed. Ship 38 sustained less damage than Ship 37 on the previous flight, and splashed down on target in the Indian Ocean. It was the last Block 2 Starship to fly.