Starship's 13th flight ends intact, setting up a possible tower catch next time

SpaceX flew its full-scale Starship on July 24, 2026, landing the upper stage intact and eyeing a pad catch on the next attempt.

SpaceX completed the 13th test flight of Starship on July 24, 2026, lifting off from Starbase, Texas at 5:51 pm CDT. The roughly hour-long flight ended with the upper stage making an intact splashdown in the Indian Ocean west of Australia. Rather than breaking up or burning, the ship tipped over and floated — an improvement over earlier water landings. Elon Musk said the company will likely attempt to catch the ship with the launch tower on the next flight, pending a review of the data.

The 408-foot rocket relies on a heat shield of more than 18,000 ceramic tiles over a stainless steel airframe, which held up against reentry temperatures reaching 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit. This was the second flight of Starship Version 3. The upper stage deployed 20 Starlink V3 satellites — the first of the upgraded model, which is too large to launch on a Falcon 9. The Super Heavy booster, carrying 33 Raptor engines, had a rougher outcome: some engines failed to restart for the landing burn, causing a hard splashdown in the Gulf.

Routine reuse is the whole point. SpaceX has already caught Super Heavy boosters with the tower arms; catching the ship the same way would close the loop on a fully reusable heavy-lift vehicle, the mechanism that drives launch cost per kilogram down toward orbit-as-utility.

Watch the next flight for the ship catch — contingent on the data review — and whether Version 3 boosters can match the reuse Version 2 achieved twice.

Source: Ars Technica