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Starship S40 drifts for five days as SpaceX plans recovery
Starship S40 has drifted in the Indian Ocean for five days. SpaceX plans a 1,200-km tow to Australia before shipping it to Texas.
Image: ixbt
SpaceX has sent several vessels to the Indian Ocean to recover Starship S40, which splashed down after a successful test flight and has now been drifting at sea for five days. The recovery will involve towing the prototype roughly 1,200 kilometers, transferring it to a barge, and shipping it to the United States.
Image source: ixbt
Elon Musk described the operation in a post on X, confirming that SpaceX was sending a vessel to retrieve Starship after its ocean landing. The company has also released new footage of the prototype’s controlled splashdown.
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The flight itself went well. Getting the vehicle back to land is the more complicated logistical phase, with three ships reportedly heading to the area, including two ocean-going tugboats.
Starship S40 recovery route
After the recovery team lifts or secures the prototype, it is expected to take Starship to a specially prepared dock in Australia. SpaceX engineers will conduct an initial inspection there before the vehicle is loaded onto a covered transport barge bound for Texas, where the company assembles and tests its heavy rockets.
The route is designed around the vehicle’s current position and the available recovery infrastructure. Rather than returning directly to the United States, S40 will first be handled in Australia, adding another maritime transfer before it reaches SpaceX’s Texas facilities.
The 13th test flight
Starship S40's mission was the program’s 13th test flight, conducted on July 25, and ranked among its most successful. For SpaceX, the key result is not only that the prototype landed softly but also how much damage, if any, it sustained while coming down and remaining in the ocean.
That condition will determine how ready the vehicle is for the next phase of testing. SpaceX estimates that the return journey to the United States will take several weeks, accounting for the Australian stop and the ocean tow. Poor weather could extend the timeline further.
The company has not provided a more specific delivery date. For SpaceX, transporting a rocket by ocean after landing is unusual, but the recovery of Starship S40 is becoming part of the test campaign itself.
Ilya Ignatov is a technical journalist and news writer. He graduated from the Moscow Technical University of Communications and Informatics with a degree in information security and has written about hardware, software, and consumer electronics since 2018.
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via ITzine
