9.10.2026
After months at sea and a huge recovery effort by SpaceX, Starship Flight 13’s Ship 40 is back home.
It returned to the Port of Brownsville in Texas against all odds.
Space enthusiasts and photographers in the Brownsville area, which is just west of Starbase, Texas, flocked to the Port early Oct. 7 to catch sight of the returning Starship.
Starship's “lucky Flight 13” on July 24 ended with a major milestone for SpaceX, when for the first time a Starship splashed down intact in the Indian Ocean. No explosion, just some flames. Starship plopped over and bobbed in the sea.
SpaceX personnel quickly scrambled to launch a recovery effort even as the company said they didn't expect the Starship to be retrievable.
At one point, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted on X that the recovery effort was "not looking good." But the team pulled it off and soon Starship was spotted being towed by Christmas Island on Aug. 18.
Eventually, SpaceX plans to catch the approximately 171-ft-tall spacecrafts back at the launch site and reuse them multiple times. But for now, the recovered ship is not just a trophy, it provides engineers with valuable data.
What SpaceX plans to do with this catch of Ship 40 remains to be seen.
Soon, Florida residents may get their first glimpse of a Starship rolling into Kennedy Space Center from Texas. SpaceX’s barge, “You’ll Thank Me Later”, has been spotted delivering Starship infrastructure to the Cape. Just this past week, a Starlink “pez dispenser” part – which deploys Starlink satellites from a Starship – was seen being loaded onto the barge for transport to Florida.
It's still unclear when the first Starship will begin its journey over to Florida for the maiden launch from Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39A. Federal Aviation Administration documents and SpaceX comments hint toward an arrival, and possible launch, by the end of the year.
Quelle: Florida Today