SpaceX Starship Flight 13 Achieves Softest-Ever Splashdown in First Flight Since IPO

SpaceX's Starship completed its 13th integrated test flight on July 24, 2026, deploying 20 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites and splashing down intact in the Indian Ocean in what the company called the softest water landing the vehicle has ever achieved. The mission was the first Starship test since SpaceX closed its Nasdaq IPO in June, and it delivered a mixed result: a clean upper-stage splashdown alongside a rough landing for the Super Heavy booster, whose engines failed to fully relight during descent.

The flight lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Texas and combined two major test objectives in a single mission: proving the ship can survive atmospheric reentry with its heat shield intact, and showing that Starship can actually deploy real satellites rather than mass simulators for the first time.

What Happened: Starship's 13th Test Flight

Super Heavy Booster 20 and Starship Ship 40 lifted off from Orbital Launch Pad 2 at Starbase at 5:51 PM CDT (22:51 UTC) on July 24. The combined vehicle stands 407 feet tall and is powered by 33 Raptor engines. The flight followed a suborbital trajectory, meaning it was deliberately designed to fall just short of a full orbit, a standard safety practice SpaceX uses for early test flights carrying real hardware.

During ascent, Starship deployed 20 third-generation Starlink satellites, the first time the vehicle has released operational satellites rather than dummy weights. Because the trajectory was suborbital, the satellites reentered the atmosphere roughly 20 minutes after deployment and were never placed into a working orbit. Six of the 20 satellites carried onboard cameras specifically to photograph the ship's heat shield tiles during flight, a rendezvous-style inspection technique that echoes how NASA once photographed the Space Shuttle from a following spacecraft.

Roughly an hour and five minutes after launch, Ship 40 splashed down in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia. SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot described the moment during live commentary: "I'm a little over the moon right now," he said, calling it "the softest splashdown we have ever had with Starship in the Indian Ocean." The ship tipped onto its side after touchdown and remained fully intact, floating on the surface with several onboard cameras still transmitting video. "This is just the first time we've put a Starship into the water," Huot added, noting that an intact, floating vehicle gives engineers a rare chance to inspect heat shield performance after the fact rather than relying only on in-flight camera data.

Key Details

The Super Heavy booster's performance told a different story. Thirteen engines were designated to relight for the descent and landing burn, but only 10 of the 13 restarted. By the moment of splashdown, only about five engines appeared to still be running, and the booster came down in the Gulf of Mexico off the Texas coast at a higher velocity than planned. SpaceX described the landing as controlled despite the shortfall, but multiple outlets covering the flight characterized it as a hard splashdown rather than a soft one.

The contrast between the two stages was stark: the ship's Indian Ocean landing was the gentlest touchdown Starship has recorded, while the booster's Gulf of Mexico landing exposed a real gap in the engine relight sequence that SpaceX will need to diagnose before the next flight. Huot, visibly pleased with the overall outcome, closed his commentary with a nod to the flight number itself: "Wow. Lucky number 13."

Why It Matters

Heat shield durability is widely viewed as the single biggest unsolved problem standing between Starship and full reusability. Every previous test flight has relied on in-flight cameras and telemetry to judge how the ship's thousands of ceramic tiles hold up during the fiery reentry through the atmosphere. This flight is different because the ship survived splashdown intact and kept floating with cameras running, giving engineers a chance to examine real hardware condition rather than working only from flight data.

The satellite deployment milestone matters just as much for SpaceX's business model. Starlink generates the large majority of SpaceX's revenue, and the V3 satellite generation is central to the company's plan to dramatically expand internet capacity and support new orbital data center ambitions. Proving that Starship's payload bay and deployment mechanism work as designed, even on a suborbital test, is a prerequisite for eventually using Starship to launch V3 satellites into their real operational orbit.

Industry Context

SpaceX conducted this test flight from a position of financial strength that would have been unthinkable for a rocket company a decade ago. The company completed its Nasdaq IPO in June at a valuation of roughly 2.3 trillion dollars, and Starlink alone has become one of the most valuable pieces of space infrastructure ever built. Rival Blue Origin has responded by raising its own external capital, closing a 10 billion dollar round earlier this year to fund its New Glenn rocket and broader space ambitions, though it continues to trail SpaceX in launch cadence and commercial revenue.

The renewed interest in reusable heavy-lift rockets reflects a broader shift in the space industry, where launch cost per kilogram has become the defining competitive metric. A fully reusable Starship, with both the booster and the ship recovered and reflown, would represent the largest single drop in launch costs the industry has seen, which is why every test flight, successful or not, draws intense scrutiny from competitors and investors alike.

What It Means for Users and the Industry

For existing Starlink subscribers, nothing changes immediately. The satellites deployed on this flight reentered the atmosphere within 20 minutes and never joined the operational constellation. The V3 generation SpaceX has previously described is expected to offer roughly 10 times the capacity of current satellites, with high-speed laser links connecting satellites to each other, but that capacity only becomes available once V3 units are actually launched into their working orbit on a future orbital-class mission.

For the wider launch industry, a successful heat shield test carries more weight than the deployment milestone itself. Airlines, satellite operators, and government agencies watching Starship's progress are ultimately interested in whether the vehicle can fly the same hardware repeatedly without expensive rebuilds. Each piece of tile-condition data SpaceX gathers from an intact, recovered ship shortens the path toward that goal.

What Happens Next

SpaceX engineers will spend the coming weeks analyzing the heat shield imagery captured during the flight alongside telemetry from the booster's landing burn to understand why only 10 of 13 engines relit. The company has historically moved quickly between test flights, often making hardware and software changes within weeks rather than months. A 14th test flight is expected to attempt another suborbital or, potentially, the company's first genuine orbital-class satellite deployment if this flight's data holds up under review.

Final Takeaway

Starship Flight 13 was neither a clean success nor a failure. The ship's intact, floating splashdown in the Indian Ocean gives SpaceX its best heat shield inspection data yet, while the Super Heavy booster's rough landing in the Gulf of Mexico is a clear reminder that full reusability is still a work in progress. Taken together, the flight moves SpaceX's most ambitious rocket program forward while leaving a specific, diagnosable engineering problem for the team to fix before the next launch.

Why a Rough Booster Landing Still Counts as Progress

SpaceX has built its entire Starship development process around flying real hardware early and often, accepting that individual flights will expose specific failures rather than waiting years to attempt a flawless debut. Under that philosophy, a booster that relit 10 of 13 engines and still executed a controlled, if hard, splashdown represents forward motion rather than a setback. On Flight 12, the booster reportedly failed to complete its landing burn at all, making this flight's partial engine relight a measurable improvement even though the outcome still fell short of the smooth touchdown SpaceX has achieved on some earlier flights.

The distinction matters because Starship's business case depends on reflying the same booster and ship dozens of times, the way SpaceX already reuses Falcon 9 boosters. A hard splashdown that still leaves the booster in one recognizable piece, with clear telemetry showing exactly which engines failed to relight, gives engineers a specific, fixable problem rather than a mysterious loss of the vehicle. That is precisely the kind of incremental, data-rich failure the test program is designed to produce.

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