SpaceX’s Ship 40 Is Finally Back Home at Starbase After 75 Days at Sea

At long last, Ship 40 has made its much-anticipated return home to Starbase, Texas. The scorched Starship upper stage arrived on Wednesday, October 7, riding on the deck of the heavy-lift vessel Forte, 75 days after it splashed down in the Indian Ocean.

Ship 40 flew on Starship Flight 13 on July 24 and gave the program its first intact ocean splashdown. It was expected to sink after the soft landing. It kept floating instead, and SpaceX turned that into an unplanned recovery mission that ran for weeks.

Recovery crews towed the 171-foot ship to Christmas Island after 24 days adrift in rough seas. Engineers then spent several days inspecting it offshore and pulling heatshield samples before SpaceX loaded it onto a semi-submersible in late August for what the company called a several-month journey back to Texas. That voyage is now done.

Ship 40 arrives at Starbase. Credit: Jerry Pike / NASASpaceflight

The ship looks rough, which is no surprise. Photographer Jerry Pike, who captured the arrival for NASASpaceflight, wrote that 75 days at sea “have not been kind to this resilient ship,” but it made it back “(mostly) intact.” His shots of crews standing next to the hull also give a real sense of how big a Starship upper stage is up close.

The data from Ship 40 has already been put to use. SpaceX said in August that the reentry findings would shape improvements on future vehicles, and its “Holy Grail of Rocketry” documentary episode told the story of the recovery in September. Since then, Flight 14 deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites.

What SpaceX hasn’t said yet is what happens to Ship 40 now that it’s back. The company hasn’t posted about the arrival, and there’s no word on whether the vehicle will be studied further, put on display, or scrapped for parts. Whatever comes next, a Starship that floated across part of the Indian Ocean and then rode halfway around the world is finally parked back where it was built.