The Starship rocket was recovered after more than a month floating at sea

SpaceX announced on August 27 that the company had put the upper stage named Ship 40 of the Starship rocket on a large semi-submersible ship in the Indian Ocean off Christmas Island. SpaceX's rocket recovery team will return this part to Starbase in South Texas, USA, over a distance of more than 16,000 km. Ars Technica said the company had to ship it by sea because the Starship was too large to fit inside any aircraft without dismantling it. The travel time is expected to last several months.

Ship 40 successfully landed in the Indian Ocean on its 13th test flight on July 24. For nearly a month, the company's recovery team towed the 52-meter-tall and 9-meter-diameter rocket component closer to shore, but weather conditions were challenging and seas became increasingly rough.

On August 18, they towed Ship 40 near Christmas Island (Australian territory, about 1,900 km northwest of Broome town) and kept the ship afloat with a Yokohama buoy filled with compressed air to wait for inspection. SpaceX engineers then tested the vehicle for several days and collected a wealth of valuable data.

Flight 13 was the second launch of the V3 version of the Starship rocket. Ship 40 is the first upper stage of Starship to fly close to orbit and remain intact after taking on water. This gives SpaceX an unprecedented opportunity to research, evaluate and perfect the aerodynamic design, hydraulic systems, heat brick performance and overall structure. SpaceX engineers have collected plenty of data from a total of 13 Starship test flights, but nothing compares to testing the hardware returned from space.

A thorough examination of the Ship 40 will help SpaceX evaluate the performance of the heat shield. The Starship rocket's heat shield is made from about 18,000 ceramic bricks, a key part that allows the vehicle to be completely and rapidly reusable. NASA's space shuttle used similar bricks for protection during reentry, but required careful replacement and maintenance after each flight. SpaceX seeks to eliminate the need for brick replacements and detailed inspections to speed up future Starship fleet turnarounds.

In SpaceX's first quarterly report on August 4, president and CEO Elon Musk said the company had solved the heat shield problem. But industry experts aren't sure. Although the ceramic bricks bring the Ship back to Earth safely, it cannot be confirmed that they can withstand the flight frequency that SpaceX plans to build and maintain bases on the Moon or Mars as well as constellations of data centers in outer space.

SpaceX is preparing Ship 41 and the Super Heavy booster for the 14th flight, scheduled to launch in early September. During that flight, the company will put the Ship into orbit and return to Starbase for recovery.

Starship is designed to be the world's most powerful rocket and the first fully reusable rocket. NASA signed a contract with SpaceX to build another version of the Starship rocket to help carry astronauts to land on the lunar surface during the Artemis IV mission in 2028. Starship still has some items that need to be checked to meet NASA's requirements before being licensed to carry astronauts.

According to Stocktwits, Musk aims to turn Starship into a super heavy-duty propulsion vehicle that can revolutionize aerospace by carrying 10 million tons of cargo into orbit each year. This rocket's rapid reuse combined with its massive payload will help humanity live on another planet like Mars within 20 to 30 years, while also supporting lunar bases, Starlink network expansion and orbital AI data centers.