SpaceX managed to rescue the upper stage of the Starship rocket from the Indian Ocean

SpaceX managed to rescue the upper stage of the Starship rocket from the Indian Ocean, although earlier the head of the company, Elon Musk, wrote on social networks that the chances of success “do not look very encouraging.”

This message was written on August 7th. And on August 18, SpaceX announced that it was able to tow the upper stage of Starship to Christmas Island near Australia.

This can be considered the company's next major achievement: the rocket launched from the spaceport in south Texas, circled half of the globe, and its upper stage landed in the ocean intact. Previously, the upper stages of a rocket did not survive flight.

The section of the Starship rocket that SpaceX returned to Earth was used in the July 24 launch from the company's Starbase facility in South Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border. The mission was Starship's 13th test flight since 2023.

The 72-meter Super Heavy first stage booster landed on the water off the coast of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico after takeoff, and the 52-meter-long upper stage continued its flight into suborbital space. During the flight, the device completed a number of tasks set by SpaceX, including the short-term deployment of working Starlink satellites, which, as expected, burned up in the Earth's atmosphere.

An hour after launch, the upper stage, designated Ship 40, made a controlled landing after re-entering the Earth's atmosphere and landed upright in the Indian Ocean. Thanks to the soft landing, Ship 40 was able to slowly capsize and remain on the surface without exploding or sinking, as happened with previous prototypes.

SpaceX soon dispatched teams to search for and tow Ship 40 to shore. But the first towing attempts failed due to heavy seas.

However, as SpaceX reported, after 24 days at sea, the upper stage was still able to be delivered to the shore of Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean located about one and a half thousand kilometers northwest of the mainland.

SpaceX plans to return Ship 40 to Starbase in Texas. Although prolonged exposure to salt water likely rendered the vehicle unsuitable for re-flight, SpaceX plans to study it and use the findings in future versions.