SpaceX Starship Recovery after Splashdown in Indian Ocean on Flight Test#13
Update: "The SpaceX recovery team is still working to recover Flight 13’s Starship from the Indian Ocean. They’ve been overcoming challenging conditions and increasingly rough seas as they attempt to guide the 52m long spacecraft to port."
The thirteenth flight test of Starship was successfully launched on Friday, July 24, 2026. This was the second flight of the Starship and Super Heavy V3 vehicles and the first Starship flight to deploy "next generation" Starlink V3 satellites.
Watch the launch broadcast and read the full flight report here:
The flight test began with Super Heavy igniting all 33 Raptor 3 engines and ascending over the Gulf of Mexico. The successful first-stage ascent was followed by a hot-staging maneuver with Starship’s upper stage igniting its six Raptor engines to continue its flight to space.
Following stage separation, the Super Heavy booster performed a directional flip maneuver. The startup sequence was modified for this flight to be more robust to timing variability in engine startup and flip in the desired direction. This is done to increase overall performance. The booster successfully completed the high thrust portion of the boostback burn with all 33 engines, the first time with a Super Heavy V3, before ending the burn early. It attempted to relight its engines for the landing burn with a subset successfully igniting before experiencing a hard splashdown in the Gulf.
After completing a full-duration ascent burn on all six Raptor engines, Starship achieved its planned velocity and trajectory. Starship then successfully deployed all 20 Starlink V3 satellites. SpaceX engineers were able to successfully communicate with every satellite using radio frequency and laser links and downloaded key telemetry from the satellites. The Starlink satellites were deployed on the pre-planned trajectory and are expected to have demised upon reentry approximately 20 minutes after deployment.
The vehicle also reignited a single Raptor engine in an in-space demonstration of a core capability for future orbital missions.
Starship re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and was able to gather critical data on the performance of its heatshield before executing a dynamic banking move to mimic the trajectory that future missions returning to Starbase will fly. Starship then guided itself using its four flaps to the pre-planned splashdown zone in the Indian Ocean. After relighting all three Raptor engines, Starship executed a landing flip, landing burn, and soft splashdown, coming to rest intact in the Indian Ocean and providing critical views of an intact heatshield for the first time.
NASA plans to use a lunar lander version of Starship to deliver astronauts and cargo to the Moon during the Artemis IV mission and beyond through the Human Landing System (HLS) Program.
Video Credit: Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX)
Duration: 44 seconds
Release Date: Aug. 7, 2026
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