25.07.2026 Lucky 13: The Real Story - How Ship Came Home 🐦‍🔥 Starship’s Softest Landing Yet Puts SpaceX One Step Closer to Full Reusability On July 24, 2026, SpaceX sent its Starship megarocket on its 13th flight test from Starbase, Texas — and while the mission is technically still labeled “suborbital,” it delivered two of the clearest signs yet that the company’s next-generation launch system is maturing. The Ship upper stage deployed operational Starlink V3 satellites for the first time, and it followed that up with what SpaceX’s own launch commentator called the “softest splashdown” the vehicle has ever made. The Real Headline! Starlink V3 Goes Up While the booster’s landing burn stumbled, Ship’s performance was close to flawless. During its coast phase, the upper stage deployed 20 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites — the first time SpaceX has flown operational V3 hardware on a Starship test flight rather than mass simulators. The satellites were released one at a time through a slit-like door near the vehicle’s nose, and SpaceX confirmed contact with all 20 shortly after deployment, at an altitude of roughly 124 miles. After deployment, Ship relit one of its six Raptor engines mid-flight — a controlled demonstration of restart capability in the vacuum of space, which matters enormously for any future mission profile that requires a coast-then-burn sequence, such as an orbital insertion or a translunar departure. The part of the flight that’s generating the most excitement, though, isn’t what Starship did on the way up — it’s how it came down. After its engine relight test, Ship descended through the atmosphere on its now-familiar suborbital arc toward the Indian Ocean, the same general splashdown zone used since Flight 5. But this time, the vehicle didn’t just survive reentry — it touched down gently enough to remain fully intact, floating on the ocean surface and continuing to transmit telemetry. That’s a meaningful distinction from prior flights, where Ships typically broke apart, tipped over, or were lost shortly after touchdown. This time, the vehicle rode out its final engine burn, flared for landing, and settled onto the water in what described as a “dream scenario” — the softest ocean splashdown Starship has achieved to date. Part of what made it possible was the heat shield, which held up well through reentry — a notable improvement given that thermal protection has been one of Starship’s most persistent failure points across earlier flights. Six of the deployed Starlink satellites even carried cameras specifically to film the heat shield during descent, and engineers had also seeded sections of the shield with deliberately missing tiles to gather data on how the vehicle behaves when the thermal protection is compromised — exactly the kind of stress-testing you want before trusting a vehicle to survive reentry over and over. Flight 13 followed a rockier Flight 12 in May, when the booster missed its landing target and Ship suffered an early engine shutdown. Seen against that backdrop, this flight represents genuine forward progress: a record Max-Q survived, operational Starlink hardware successfully deployed, a mid-flight engine relight demonstrated, and — the headline achievement — an upper stage that came home in one piece. There’s still a long way to go. SpaceX has yet to complete a full Earth orbit with Starship after 13 flights, and a Government Accountability Office report flagged that the company remains behind schedule on propellant transfer technology needed for lunar missions. But Flight 13 gave SpaceX something it has struggled to bank consistently: a Ship that not only did its job on ascent, but survived to tell the story. Fingers crossed 🤞🏻 Ceyda