STARBASE, Texas — SpaceX has begun the long return of a recovered Starship spacecraft to Texas after retrieving the vehicle from the Indian Ocean, marking the first time the company has secured an intact ship following an ocean landing.
The spacecraft, identified as Ship 40, splashed down near Christmas Island after launching July 24 from Starbase. It completed an approximately hourlong flight and remained afloat, allowing recovery crews to secure it to a heavy-lift vessel for transport.
The return trip is expected to take months. Once the spacecraft reaches Texas, engineers will be able to inspect flight hardware directly and compare its condition with telemetry gathered during the mission. That physical evidence could help the company evaluate heat-shield performance, structural loads and other systems involved in atmospheric reentry.
The mission was the 13th full-scale integrated flight of the Starship system. SpaceX has been developing the vehicle as a fully reusable transportation system for cargo and crews, while NASA has selected a version of Starship as a lunar lander for its Artemis program.
Recovery does not by itself demonstrate full reusability. Starship must eventually return to a launch site, be inspected, refurbished and flown again on a practical schedule. Bringing Ship 40 back to Texas gives engineers a rare opportunity to study how close the vehicle came to meeting those goals.
