Starship Header Tanks & No Landing Legs - Explained During the belly-flop reentry, Starship falls horizontally. Propellant in the main tanks sloshes to one side. If the Raptors tried to pull from them, they’d ingest air and destroy themselves. That’s why Starship carries two small, dedicated header tanks (one in the nose, one inside the main tank). They stay completely full and pressurized, feeding the engines only for the final flip and landing burn. Landing legs were dropped for the same reason everything else was simplified: • Massive dead weight = less payload to orbit • Terrible turnaround: land off-pad → cranes → transport → slow ops Catching the ship and booster with the tower arms puts them straight back on the mount. That’s what makes rapid reuse (target: refly in under an hour) actually possible.

This is bigger than just fishing a rocket out of the ocean. Flight 13’s Starship is the first to survive a controlled reentry and soft splashdown intact — and stay floating long enough for recovery. That means engineers can finally put their hands on real flight hardware: heat shield tiles that endured peak heating, engines that fired through the landing burn, and flaps that guided it hypersonic. Every previous Ship was lost. This one can teach us exactly what worked, what didn’t, and how to make Starship truly reusable. The data from this recovery could accelerate the path to tower catches and rapid turnaround more than any telemetry ever could. That’s why the recovery team is fighting rough seas right now. History in the making. 🚀

Starship Flight 13’s Ship 40 remains the highest-value data return in the program to date. An intact vehicle after full reentry and soft splashdown delivers measurable heat-shield performance, tile retention, and structural margins that no prior flight or any simulation could provide. Recovery imagery and telemetry from the floating ship close critical feedback loops on thermal protection and landing systems. This is how iteration compresses the timeline from test article to operational, catch-capable vehicle.

This is what hope looks like. That one day, humanity will be multiplanetary. Starship 13 survived reentry, completed its softest splashdown, deployed v3 Starlink satellites & floated intact. Every flight brings us a step closer to Mars. It’s happening.

BREAKING: Starship has successfully splashed down in the Indian Ocean. • Starship completed its planned reentry and landing sequence. • The vehicle successfully reached its targeted splashdown zone in the Indian Ocean. • Another major milestone in SpaceX's effort to develop a fully reusable launch system. A successful end to another important Starship flight test.

SpaceX just demonstrated a launch cadence no other company on Earth can match Just over 17 hours after Starship Flight 13 launched from Texas, Falcon 9 lifted off from California on the Starlink 17-51 mission Starship deployed 20 next-generation Starlink V3 test satellites, survived reentry and completed a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean Falcon 9 then carried another 24 Starlink V2 Mini satellites into orbit, while its booster landed successfully on Of Course I Still Love You Two rockets, two launch sites, 44 Starlink satellites deployed. Two successful missions, all in under 18 hours SpaceX’s launch cadence is in a league of its own

Starship Flight 13 just completed an extraordinary full-duration mission in roughly 65 minutes In a single flight, Starship: • Launched from Starbase • Deployed all 20 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites • Survived atmospheric reentry • Completed a controlled soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean • Remained afloat long enough to deliver some incredible close-up views This was the first time Starship deployed fully built Starlink V3 satellites in space From liftoff to payload deployment and return to Earth in just over one hour An extraordinary end-to-end demonstration of what Starship is being built to do

👏ICE deported Marcelo Narcizo-Cristobal, a previously deported Paisas gang member from Mexico, who was previously sentenced to 20 years for drug trafficking and 15-months for illegal reentry after removal. 🛑Under @POTUS, the U.S. is no longer a safe haven for drug traffickers and gang members like Narcizo-Cristobal.