SpaceX recovers Starship from the Indian Ocean a month after launch and is shipping it back to Texas - AP News

The world's biggest and most powerful rocket launched July 24 from Starbase, Texas, on its 13th full test flight. SpaceX shared photos of the recovery operation near Christmas Island late this week, marking the company's largest salvage effort yet.

The Texas connection matters here. Starbase sits on the southern tip of the state, and every Starship flight is a Texas story, from liftoff to whatever comes next. Shipping the recovered vehicle back overland means the rocket will make its way home across the same state where it was built and launched.

For folks in Lubbock and across West Texas who track the space program, this recovery signals something real. SpaceX is now retrieving hardware from the Indian Ocean rather than writing it off, and that changes the math on what reusability actually looks like in practice.

The 13th test flight ended in the Indian Ocean, which was not the original plan for a fully reusable system, but the company is treating the vehicle as recoverable hardware rather than a loss. SpaceX has never attempted an ocean recovery of this scale before.