Ship 40s flawless flight promotes next mission catch potential

Date:
Tue, 28 Jul 2026 17:33:20 +0000

Description:
SpaceXs Starship Flight 13 demonstrated that the Ship can complete its
mission and return intact, The post Ship 40s flawless flight promotes next mission catch potential appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .

FULL STORY ======================================================================

SpaceXs Starship Flight 13 demonstrated that the Ship can complete its mission and return intact, surviving water impact without destruction. The Booster, however, remains a work in progress as SpaceX continues refining the clean-sheet Block 3 design.

Building on a series of targeted splashdowns, the Ships strong performance
has prompted SpaceX to evaluate whether the next catch attempt will involve a subsequent Ship rather than the Booster.



Flight 13

Starship Flight 13 made three attempts before launching on July 24. The
first attempt was on July 16, with no major issues during the count and perfect weather. However, there was an abort at T-0 because four of the 33 Raptor 3 engines did not start. This aborted the launch because SpaceXs
launch commit criteria require at least 31 of 33 engines to be running prior to liftoff.

Due to this issue, the vehicles were destacked and rolled back to their respective Mega Bays for extra work. For Booster 20, this meant swapping out six engines for spares at Starbase. The six needed replacing because SpaceX detected low turbopump pressures in those engines due to moisture in the Liquid Oxygen (LOX) Turbopumps. It is unknown at this time why the six
engines had moisture where it shouldnt have been or what the solution is to fix it. Four of Super Heavys 33 Raptor engines aborted at startup due to issues with their ox turbopumps on our launch attempt last week pic.twitter.com/Y5szDLd6f9

SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 24, 2026



After swapping the engines, SpaceX rolled Booster 20 back out and performed
a leak check and a partial spin-up of the pumps to ensure the engines worked.

The second attempt only reached about T-2:50:00, which is 20 minutes before the methane reclaim vent is scheduled to turn on and begin consuming propellant for chilldown. The scrub was due to cloud cover that made it impossible to observe the ships heat shield during ascent.

The third attempt of Flight 13 went off perfectly, with only a six-minute delay to T-0. At 5:51:00 CDT, Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off from Pad 2. Despite the issues during attempt 1, all 33 engines were running at liftoff and continued to run through ascent. Then, at hotstaging, the vehicles performed perfectly; all six engines ignited on Ship 40, assisting in pushing the booster in the correct direction, which was up and away towards the heat shield.

Booster 20 then restarted the rest of its engines for a 33-engine boost-backburn; this burn worked perfectly for a bit, but according to
SpaceX, it was shut down early. Booster 20 then performed its glide back to a splashdown point in the Gulf where it attempted a landing burn.

However, when attempting to light all 13 center engines for the initial landing burn, only 10 ignited; two more shut down before the count dropped to five. With insufficient altitude to compensate for the loss of its engines, Booster 20 hit the water at high speed, causing it to blow up.

Failing to complete the landing burn and have a soft splashdown is disappointing; however, this is a clean-sheet design booster on only its second flight. SpaceX will learn from this as they always have, and Booster
21 should perform much better. Super Heavy has splashed down in the Gulf of America! pic.twitter.com/lHdEznFpT4

SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 24, 2026



Ship 40 then completed its ascent burn with no issues and got into the coast phase after a perfect ascent. The rest of the mission was, by all
definitions, flawless; Ship 40 deployed all 20 Starlink V3 satellites, completed its in-space burn with a center engine Raptor, and then began reentry. Reentry was uneventful as the ship went through Earths atmosphere
and then performed its dynamic banking maneuver to simulate a catch at Pad 2.

Ship 40 then performed its flip and burn before having the softest
splashdown in the program so far. And because of this soft splashdown, Ship
40 survived the tipover and was floating intact on the surface of the Indian Ocean. Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the 13th flight test of Starship! pic.twitter.com/g27YJCQgiN

SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 24, 2026



While Flight 13 didnt achieve the booster success SpaceX had hoped for, it did achieve ship success. With the ship floating intact in the water, SpaceX has taken the opportunity to capture as many pictures as possible and
possibly collect samples of the heat shield for data review.



This will be a massive boon of data for the heat shield team as they attempt to eventually catch a ship. It is worth noting that, despite the landing-burn failure, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is not requiring a mishap investigation into Flight 13.

The last known information on Ship 40 is that it is still floating in the Indian Ocean, but it is unknown whether SpaceX would attempt to tow her back to port.



Flight 14

The success and issues of Flight 13 raise questions about what Flight 14
will attempt with Ship 41 and Booster 21.

First off, with possible issues during boost-back burn and the failure of
the landing burn on Booster 20, SpaceX may opt not to catch Booster 21 on Flight 14. This would likely push any flight at LC-39A out another flight so that when SpaceX does send a booster over there, it will be caught. However, if SpaceX knows exactly what went wrong with Booster 20 and is confident, the engineers may decide to try to catch Booster 21 rather than put the program behind another flight. Booster 21 Cryo Proof at Masseys

With how flawlessly Ship 40s mission objectives were accomplished, SpaceX
now has a decision to make. Over the past 13 flights, SpaceX has flown suborbital trajectories to test vital aspects of Starships mission profile, such as booster ascent, staging, boost-back burn, and ship ascent. These
tests were to determine whether they could fly the booster, recover it, and achieve nominal orbital insertion.

The next steps to test were ship payload deployment using the pez system for Starlink and, eventually, Starmind satellites; then an in-space burn to
ensure the ship could relight in space; atmospheric reentry at orbital
speeds; and finally the flip and burn on target. The reason for doing all of this in a suborbital trajectory was to ensure that no matter what issues the ship encountered in the coast phase, it would reenter over water. The last thing SpaceX would want is to go into orbit and then be unable to deorbit a 52-meter-long, 9-meter-wide stainless-steel vehicle with a heat shield.

With all that in mind, SpaceX has now demonstrated it can do all of that
with Block 3 of the ship; the next step is orbit.

This is where Flight 14 comes in: with Booster 21 and Ship 41, SpaceX may send the ship on a full orbital trajectory, have it complete the required burns, deploy Starlink V3 satellites, and then, if all goes well and the ship and tower are healthy, attempt to catch Ship 41. That final step also
requires final approval from the FAA. Ship 41 Cryo Proof at Masseys

Regarding when Flight 14 might launch, Booster 21 is currently in Mega Bay
1, having completed its cryo-proof testing about a week ago. Using Booster
20s timelines, flight readiness is at the end of August. Ship 41 completed
its cryo-proof testing at the end of June and began receiving its engines
this past week. Ship 40s timeline was a single-engine static fire 20 days after receiving the engines, but that may have been delayed while awaiting flight data from Ship 39.

Its possible that Ship 41 could be ready for static fire within the next two weeks or so. With those timelines, Flight 14 could be ready for flight as
soon as the end of August, if not early September.

Featured Image: Ship 40 and Booster 20 in Flight (Credit: SpaceX)



The post Ship 40s flawless flight promotes next mission catch potential appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .



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Link to news story: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2026/07/ship-40-catch-potential/


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