SpaceX Successfully Retrieves Starship from Indian Ocean, Begins Journey Back to Texas

POLICY WIRE — Cape Canaveral, Fla. — SpaceX has achieved its most significant salvage operation to date by retrieving its latest Starship from the Indian Ocean.

Elon Musk’s company is currently transporting the spacecraft back to its base in Texas, a journey anticipated to last several months. SpaceX released images of the recovery process near Christmas Island this week.

Starship, the world’s largest and most powerful rocket, launched on July 24 from Starbase, Texas. This marked the 13th test flight of a complete Starship, and unlike previous attempts, it survived the hour-long space-skimming flight, remaining intact and afloat.

The company expressed its appreciation on X, congratulating the SpaceX Recovery team for overcoming difficult conditions and providing engineers with valuable data to continue the rapid development of Starship.

Musk envisions using Starship to transport people and equipment to Mars, with the ultimate goal of establishing a city there. However, the immediate focus is on the moon. NASA relies on Starship, along with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Moon lander, to return astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2028.

President Donald Trump supported both Mars and the moon as destinations during a visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. He awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the four Artemis II astronauts who orbited the moon in April.

Reporting by Policy-Wire (PW)