SpaceX's Ship 40 spacecraft has been successfully transported back to the Starbase spaceport in Texas following a suborbital flight and an arduous journey across the ocean. This apparatus represents the first-ever Starship vehicle to be brought back to base post-flight, granting engineers a direct opportunity to examine the flight-proven hardware that endured the severe aerodynamic loads of atmospheric re-entry.

According to newly released visuals, the vehicle is currently positioned vertically inside the Megabay hangar, standing alongside three other newly constructed Starship units that are undergoing preparations for future flights. Ship 40 originally took to the skies on July 24 as part of the system's 13th integrated test flight, culminating in a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Despite the demanding landing environment, a substantial portion of the vehicle's structural integrity remained intact as it floated on the water's surface. Following this milestone, the enterprise organized a complex recovery operation, towing the 52-meter-long vessel through turbulent open seas over a grueling 24-day period.

The conditions of this maritime transit were allegedly so precarious that even corporate head Elon Musk supposedly voiced skepticism regarding whether the operation could be successfully concluded. Nevertheless, by August, Ship 40 was towed into calmer waters near an Australian-administered island, allowing engineers to perform preliminary inspections and extract material samples from the heat shield tiles on the underside.

In the concluding phase of the logistics chain, the Starship was loaded onto a heavy semi-submersible transport vessel named Forte, which docked at the Port of Brownsville in Texas on October 7. From there, Ship 40 was transported over land directly to the Starbase complex, where technical teams intend to conduct exhaustive forensic analysis to evaluate the flight's impact on its architecture.

Source: kun.uz