Starship Ship 40 is back in Texas. Even so, the spacecraft that was never supposed to survive its own landing rolled into Starbase on Wednesday, Oct. 7, after one of the strangest road trips in rocket history, according to Aviation Week.
The 171-foot upper stage came home aboard the heavy-lift vessel Forte, about 75 days after it splashed down in the Indian Ocean, per Tesla North. Next, engineers plan to take it apart for more analysis at Starbase.
From Splashdown to Starbase
Ship 40 flew on Flight 13, which launched July 24 from Starbase. In fact, that was the 13th full-stack Starship test flight. The ship survived an hour in the air and then made a controlled touchdown in the Indian Ocean, according to the Associated Press via NBC DFW.
Then came the plot twist. Everyone expected the ship to sink after its soft landing. Instead, it kept floating. As a result, a routine test turned into an unplanned salvage mission.
It spent 24 days at sea in rough weather before recovery, ABC Australia reported. Crews towed it to Christmas Island, an Australian territory south of Indonesia. Forte began loading it from the water on Aug. 24, and crews secured the ship aboard a semi-submersible vessel the next day.
The Long Way Home for the Recovered Starship
SpaceX had called the trip a “several month journey,” as Engadget reported. It was not exaggerating. Footage shows Forte carrying Starship Ship 40 through the waterways into the Port of Brownsville on its way to Starbase, according to Starlust.
That is a lot of ocean for a rocket that engineers built to fly, not float.
Engineers did not wait for the finish line. Instead, they inspected the ship offshore and pulled heatshield samples along the way. Even so, the arrival is a notable milestone. Flight 13 was the first time a full-up Starship stayed intact and afloat after splashdown, and the effort was SpaceX’s biggest salvage operation yet, per the AP via ABC News.
Why Starship Ship 40 Matters for the Future
Here is the thing: SpaceX almost never gets to put its hands on a returning upper stage. Most test ships end up as debris or on the bottom of the ocean. This one is in one piece, and the heatshield is where the real lessons live. Tiles that survived reentry, and tiles that did not, show engineers exactly what the vehicle went through.
That makes this Starship salvage part of a bigger push. SpaceX recently reached orbit and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, and every lesson from a recovered ship feeds that effort. Meanwhile, the Texas space economy keeps growing, as Blue Origin’s plans for 2,000 jobs in Hutto show.
So what happens now? Nobody outside SpaceX seems to know. The company has not said what analysis it plans, and it had not posted about the arrival at the time of writing. One thing is clear: a spacecraft that traveled thousands of miles by sea just to reach its own factory has earned a close look. Starship Ship 40 has already taught SpaceX plenty before a single bolt comes off.
Not bad for a ship that was supposed to sink.
