SpaceX recovers Starship from the Indian Ocean a month after launch and ships it back to Texas

SpaceX has completed its biggest-ever salvage operation, pulling the Starship rocket from the Indian Ocean near Christmas Island after it survived its 13th test flight on 24 July intact — the first time any Starship has endured the hour-long space-skimming trip and remained floating. The company is now shipping the vehicle back to its Starbase in Texas, a journey expected to take several months. President Trump visited NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Friday, endorsing both lunar and Mars missions and signing an executive order that establishes a new US Space Academy.

Standing taller and generating more thrust than any other rocket ever built, Starship is central to NASA's plans — alongside Jeff Bezos' Blue Moon lander — to return astronauts to the moon as early as 2028.

Trump awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the four Artemis II astronauts, who completed a lunar flyby in April.

The new US Space Academy, Trump said, will train recruits for the Space Force, NASA and civilian spaceflight — and will one day rival West Point and Annapolis.