SpaceX’s Starship 40 recovered after 24 days at sea, return to Texas takes months

SpaceX says Starship 40, recovered from the Indian Ocean after splashdown, will take several months to reach Texas. The upper stage survived recovery intact, giving engineers more than telemetry to study.

Launch and mission purpose

Starship 40 launched from SpaceX’s Starbase in South Texas on July 24. The spacecraft deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites during a flight lasting roughly 65 minutes, but the mission was suborbital. The satellites reentered and burned up about 20 minutes after deployment, as intended, since the launch was meant to test Starship’s payload deployment system and related systems.

Recovery operation from the Indian Ocean

After 24 days at sea, SpaceX’s recovery team moved Starship 40 into calmer waters near Christmas Island, an Australian territory south of Indonesia. The almost 300-foot Normand Ranger held the spacecraft near the island until the 710-foot-long transport ship Forte arrived to take over.

Crews tethered Starship 40 alongside Forte as the transport ship filled ballast tanks and lowered its cargo deck. Forte then pumped ballast water out, rose beneath the spacecraft, and lifted it into place for transport.

Why the intact recovery matters

SpaceX had previously recovered Starship upper stages in ways that left engineers with limited physical evidence. Starship 40 was recovered intact, even if it is not expected to be reusable. SpaceX has already collected heat-shield samples, which it says provide “vital insight” into how the stage handled reentry.

Slow transit back to Texas

SpaceX has not published the exact route Forte will take to return to Texas, but it described the trip as a “several month journey.” Ship tracking indicates an October 8 arrival at the Port of Brownsville, Texas.

Sal Mercogliano, a shipping expert and history professor, said Forte’s westward course suggests a plausible route via the Cape of Good Hope. SpaceX’s broader goal remains returning missions to Starbase Texas using a tower catch rather than repeating a detour through the Indian Ocean.

Why this matters

The recovery provides physical data from reentry and handling that can inform future Starship designs and missions, while also testing how SpaceX can retrieve hardware from long-distance deployments.