To fast travel to your ship in Starfield, you basically have two main options: use the surface map or use your scanner while on foot.

Quick Scoop: How to Fast Travel to Your Ship

1. Fast travel via Surface Map

When you’re on a planet’s surface and want to get back to your ship quickly:

  1. Open the map (Surface Map, not the full star map).
  1. Look for the icon labeled “My Ship” or your ship symbol among the points of interest.
  1. Highlight it, then select the fast travel option (on PC this is shown as a specific key like R; on controller it’s a face button such as Y, depending on your layout).
  1. Confirm, and you’ll load straight back at your ship without having to run all the way there.

This works especially well when you’re done with a POI, over‑encumbered, or just want to dump loot into cargo and move on.

2. Fast travel via Scanner (on foot)

You can also warp back without even opening the menu, using the handheld scanner HUD:

  1. Press the scanner button (F on PC, LB on controller by default).
  1. Look around until you see your ship icon in the distance in the scanner overlay. It might be small, especially in big cities like New Atlantis.
  1. Center the reticle on the ship icon.
  1. When the “fast travel” prompt appears, confirm to teleport right back to the ship.

Players point out you can even fast travel to the ship from anywhere in New Atlantis as long as you’re “outside,” scanning toward the spaceport area and selecting the tiny ship symbol.

3. When fast travel to ship doesn’t work

Sometimes the game blocks fast travel, including jumping to your ship. Common blockers include:

  • You’re inside certain interiors like caves, specific buildings, or some ships.
  • Your ship is docked (you may see messages like “You cannot fast travel while the ship is docked”).
  • You’re over the game’s encumbrance/conditions limit for fast travel in that situation.
  • You’re in the middle of combat or a scripted sequence where fast travel is temporarily disabled.

If that happens, move outside into the open area of the planet/city, end combat if needed, then try the surface map or scanner methods again.

4. Extra tip: Using mission/POI fast travel

While this isn’t strictly “to your ship,” it’s part of the same system and can save you a lot of walking:

  • From the mission log, select a quest and use the button to “set course” or fast travel directly to its objective if you’ve already discovered it.
  • From orbit or while piloting, pull up the scanner, center on a surface point of interest, and fast travel there instead of landing manually, then you can later fast travel back to your ship as described above.

This combo—mission jumps plus fast travel back to ship—turns the galaxy into a hop‑on, hop‑off network instead of a walking simulator.

Mini story example

Imagine you’re deep in New Atlantis, halfway across the city from the spaceport, loaded with loot. At first it feels like you have to ride the NAT back, follow the quest marker, and slog through several transitions. But you open your scanner, tilt it toward the UC tower and down toward the spaceport, and notice a tiny ship icon tucked beneath the skyline. You line up the reticle, hit the fast travel prompt, and instantly pop into the shadow of your landing gear—no subway ride, no backtracking, just straight to your ship to offload cargo and plot your next grav jump.

TL;DR:
Open the Surface Map and fast travel to “My Ship,” or pull up your scanner , find the ship icon in the HUD, and use the fast travel prompt—just make sure you’re outside and not in a restricted interior or docked state.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.