Six days after SpaceX's Starship upper stage made its softest-ever ocean splashdown during Flight 13, the 171-foot (about 52 meters) vehicle is floating belly-up in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia, still transmitting telemetry.

"This is the first time we've put an intact Starship in the water," SpaceX's Dan Huot said during the July 24 launch livestream, as drone footage showed the blackened rocket booster bobbing on the waves. 

On previous flights, the upper stage typically broke apart or exploded on impact. This time, it survived reentry, with cameras capturing stunning views of the vehicle wrapped in superheated plasma as it descended toward the ocean. It executed a controlled engine burn to flip into a vertical position and gently tipped over to rest on the open sea.

During the suborbital flight, Starship released 20 Starlink V3 internet satellites in the first-ever deployment from the rocket. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed the vehicle was "intact, floating in the ocean and transmitting telemetry."

The Super Heavy booster, however, had a harder landing in the Gulf of Mexico, with only five of its 13 landing engines still lit at splashdown.

For NASA, the progress is critical. The agency has selected Starship as one of two candidate landers for its Artemis IV crewed moon mission in 2028, and full reusability is a prerequisite.

China's parallel push

The achievement came as China accelerates its own reusable rocket development. On July 10, just two weeks before Starship Flight 13, China successfully landed the first stage of a Long March-10B rocket at sea for the first time – a breakthrough for the country's space program – using an innovative, net-based approach.

While Starship remains in a class of its own, the growing competition underscores a global race toward fully reusable launch systems. For both SpaceX and China's emerging commercial space industry, the ability to recover and reuse rocket stages is seen as the key to lowering launch costs and expanding deep-space access.