Overview
- The Starship second stage, Ship 40, which splashed down on Friday, July 24, stayed afloat in the Indian Ocean for five days and SpaceX shared imagery of the intact vehicle.
- SpaceX confirmed it has dispatched a recovery vessel to the Indian Ocean to bring Ship 40 aboard for inspection and data collection.
- The Super Heavy first-stage booster, Booster 20, suffered a partial Raptor engine relight during its landing burn and failed to complete a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Flight 13 also deployed 20 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites and demonstrated an in-space Raptor relight on the upper stage, showing progress on payload delivery and orbital maneuvering.
- Engineers will use the recovered hardware and telemetry to test reuse steps such as heat-shield performance and restart reliability, outcomes that could affect SpaceX’s reuse plans and NASA’s Artemis timelines.