SpaceX rocket debris stranded on Mexican beaches threatens endangered sea turtles

SpaceX has performed nine launches of its massive Super Heavy-Starship rocket since April 2023. Six of those have ended in a ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ (RUD), including the three most recent ones after a hat trick of mostly successful launches.

Those RUDs have resulted in debris being strewn over the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean which has been washing up on shore. One in particular that is drawing attention is Bagdad Beach in northern Tamaulipas, Mexico, just across the border from Starbase where SpaceX has its launchpad.

Concerns raised in Mexico about SpaceX Starship debris harming endangered sea turtles

Conibio Global, a civilian biodiversity conservation and investigation group, is raising the alarm about the harmful effect that the Starship launches could be having on the population of Kemp’s ridley turtles, an endangered species of sea turtle, that inhabit the area just south of Starbase. Their concerns are twofold.

On the one hand they are worried about the turtles ingesting the debris, or it blocking hatchlings from getting to the ocean. The other is that vibrations from the launches themselves could be compacting the sand on the beach making it impossible for the baby turtles to dig their way out after hatching.

As far as the debris is concerned, Ibarra says that it includes various types of plastics both hard and soft as well as bubble wrap, and pieces of blue-colored adhesive, on top of aluminum tanks and steel pipes. SpaceX has said in a statement that they have had the Starship materials tested for toxicity and can “confirm they pose no chemical, biological, or toxicological risks.”

Still there is the matter of who is responsible for picking up the debris. Jesús Elías Ibarra, founder of Conibio Global, told CNN that after a catastrophic launch in May millions of particles washed up on Bagdad Beach. Unlike a previous launch he witnessed, when shortly after the rocket booster fell in the water salvage teams were on the scene to clean up, no one came to collect the debris.

So, his association set about removing the debris themselves a few days later. They collected over a ton of debris in an area less than a third of a mile. The beach is nearly 25 miles long.

For its part, SpaceX says that it has been trying to recover the debris, “which is and remains the tangible property of SpaceX,” but that “these attempts have been hindered by unauthorized parties trespassing on private property.”

SpaceX said in June that the company had “requested local and federal assistance from the government of Mexico in the recovery of anomaly related debris, offered resources and assistance in the clean-up and have sought validation of SpaceX’s right to conduct recovery operations.”

This came after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum threatened to sue Elon Musk’s aerospace company over the contamination from the rocket launches. She said officials are conducting a “comprehensive review” of the environmental impacts SpaceX launches are having in Tamaulipas.

Those will likely increase as the Federal Aviation Administration gave the green light in May to speed up the rhythm of Starship launches by fivefold. Instead of five launches per year, SpaceX will be able to perform 25. The agency said that the increased frequency would not adversely affect the environment.

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