SpaceX Retrieves Starship Upper Stage After 24 Days at Sea Near Christmas Island
SpaceX has sent engineers to Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, to recover the upper stage of a Starship spacecraft that splashed down nearly a month ago. It is the first time SpaceX has retrieved an intact upper stage — the part of the rocket that travels to orbit — from open water.
The spacecraft, designated Ship 40, launched from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, on 24 July 2026, in the thirteenth integrated flight test of the Starship–Super Heavy system (Florida Today). Starbase is SpaceX's headquarters and one of the world's first commercial spaceports built for orbital missions (SpaceX). After reaching orbit at roughly 130 miles (about 209 km) and deploying 20 non-functioning satellites, the upper stage re-entered the atmosphere and performed a controlled splashdown in international waters of the Indian Ocean (The Guardian; Facebook/WESH 2 News).
Flight 13 was the first Starship upper stage to achieve an intact splashdown in the Indian Ocean (Florida Today). Previous recovery efforts in the Starship test campaign had focused mainly on the first-stage booster — the large lower section that provides initial thrust at launch — making the retrieval of Ship 40 a notable expansion of SpaceX's recovery scope (The Guardian).
The 52-metre-long vehicle spent about 24 days at sea before SpaceX's recovery team towed it to a position just off the coast of Christmas Island, roughly 1,550 kilometres off Western Australia (The Guardian; Space.com). A spokesperson for the Australian Space Agency confirmed that SpaceX towed the Starship to Christmas Island after the vehicle re-entered and landed in international waters (The Guardian). The tow operation was underway on 18 August 2026 (ABC News Australia).
An exclusion zone was established off Christmas Island to prevent recreational vessels from approaching the recovered Starship (The Guardian). A wildlife photographer captured images of the recovery operation near the island, providing the first visual confirmation of the vehicle's condition after nearly a month in open ocean (Florida Today). The Guardian published a video report on 19 August 2026 documenting the moment the Starship was spotted off the island (The Guardian).
The recovery comes amid a rapid expansion of orbital activity. Space archaeologist Alice Gorman of Flinders University noted that the number of active satellites grew from roughly 5,000 to about 16,000, of which approximately 10,000 belong to SpaceX's own constellation (The Guardian). That figure points to the growing density of objects in low Earth orbit and the downstream implications for re-entry management and debris recovery.
In the weeks before the Starship retrieval, six metallic objects — described as "space balls" and likely originating from a foreign rocket body — washed ashore in north Queensland (The Guardian). Those incidents point to a recurring issue for Australia and other Indian Ocean-bordering states: as launch frequency increases, so does the likelihood that spacecraft components, whether controlled or uncontrolled, will come to rest in their maritime jurisdictions.
The broader context here is one of escalating operational tempo for Starship and its expanding recovery footprint in the Indian Ocean region. SpaceX's ability to locate, tow, and ultimately recover an intact upper stage after weeks at sea raises practical questions about post-flight logistics, the durability of heat-shield materials and structural components after prolonged saltwater exposure, and the regulatory frameworks governing commercial spacecraft recovery in Australian waters. The Australian Space Agency's involvement signals that governmental coordination is part of the process, but the long-term framework for routine recovery operations of vehicles at this scale remains an open question for policymakers in Canberra and elsewhere.
For the Starship program specifically, the retrieval of Ship 40 gives SpaceX engineers a recovered orbital-class upper stage that can be inspected for material degradation, structural integrity, and the effects of prolonged ocean submersion. Whether the data gathered from this vehicle feeds directly into the next iteration of Starship upper stages or informs broader design changes will depend on what the inspection reveals. The launch-and-recover cycle that SpaceX has now demonstrated for the upper stage, not just the booster, is a prerequisite for full reusability, which is the program's central engineering objective.
