The “Spaceship” artifacts (not to be confused with Spaceships - sorry!) give a bonus to one or more of the base stats of the celestial body which it is active on. The bonuses vary, dependent on the biome that the artifact originated from, but will always give a bonus to **the Range stat. This bonus scales from 5% for a Common artifact, up to 15% for a Mythic artifact (or even more, depending on the biome!).
There is nothing unintuitive about the “Spaceship”, or any of the other stat-boosting artifacts - they can be activated and deactivated as many times as you wish, can be used on any level of celestial body, and will provide their bonus instantly (once the blockchain transaction is confirmed).
This planet has a “Spaceship” on it. Even if you are far away, be careful of distant attacks emanating from this planet - the “Spaceship” artifact gives a bonus to Range - the best stat!
In the Early game, the “Spaceship” is (was) the best artifact to find. An increase in Range is always good. These artifacts would allow you to expand further, and fight early conflicts more efficiently.
In the Mid-Late game, the “Spaceship” is (was) just as powerful. Due to the nature of stat-boosting artifacts being able to be activated/deactivated many times, they could be used on planets freely whilst expanding, and were the second best artifacts to have (other than wormholes) to efficiently move energy from “feeder” planets, to your more powerful, larger planets (or other celestial bodies).
The stats provided by a rare Ice Spaceship - an incredible boost to Range.
As you can see, this artifact gave a 30%(!) bonus to Range. This is such a large boost **due to the artifacts biome. The Ice biome also always provides a Range bonus. Spaceships of other biomes would have only granted a 10% Range boost for an artifact of this rarity (along with their other stat boosts).