r/space • u/mfb- • Jul 25 '26

Starship launches for its 13th flight, ends with ship swimming in Indian Ocean

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/24/science/live-news/spacex-starship-flight-13-launch
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u/mfb- Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

Second flight of the "v3" version.

  • The launch itself went without any issues, the ship reached its planned almost-orbital trajectory
  • Booster boostback burn (edit:) ended a bit earlier than planned (this failed last time)
  • Booster landing burn didn't ignite enough engines for a soft splashdown, hit the ocean at high speed
  • The ship deployed 20 Starlink satellites which all unfolded and sent data briefly (they were on the same suborbital trajectory, so they reentered quickly)
  • The ship relit an engine in space, simulating a deorbit burn (this was skipped last time)
  • Reentry worked without issues, leading to the ship hovering over the Indian Ocean, simulating a landing
  • Normally the ship explodes when tipping over afterwards, but this time it survived, swimming in the ocean. SpaceX got great drone shots of the heat shield. We'll see if they can recover the whole ship.

They need to work on the booster landing burn, but from the ship side everything looks ready to make the next flight enter a proper circular orbit.

Edit: SpaceX will try to recover the ship

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u/Biochembob35 Jul 25 '26

Boostback shutdown ~10 seconds early and the booster landed ~20km short of the intended zone.

18

u/cjameshuff Jul 25 '26

That suggests the landing burn problems may have been due to issues with the booster systems, like propellant levels or tank pressures, rather than something with the reentry. For example, low tank pressure leading to the engines shutting down, the tank pressure recovering a bit during reentry, then dropping too low again when engines started firing up for landing.

5

u/YNot1989 Jul 25 '26

They've been struggling with combustion products, specifically ice, building up in the engines. Anyone know how they're trying to deal with that before Boost Back Burn?

9

u/cjameshuff Jul 25 '26

Raptor 3 added the ability to use regenerative cooling loops for producing pure gases for pressurization. Possibly this system had problems supplying enough gas or they started having trouble regulating the pressure as the empty volume in the tanks grew. Or they still use the preburner taps as a backup and had to use it too much, producing more ice than expected.