SpaceX’s Starship test launch from southern Texas sparked a 3.5-acre fire and spread debris over hundreds of acres of combined company-owned and state park land, a federal agency said.
The April 20 rocket launch severely damaged the launch pad, sending concrete, steel and other objects thousands of feet into the air, the Texas division of US Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday in an emailed statement. The fire on state park land south of the launchpad was extinguished.
“Although no debris was documented on refuge fee-owned lands, staff documented approximately 385 acres (156 hectares) of debris on SpaceX’s facility and at Boca Chica State Park,” the agency said, adding that a “plume cloud of pulverized concrete” deposited material up to 6.5 miles northwest of the pad site. It said it has found no evidence of dead birds or wildlife.
SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Elon Musk’s company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., launched the next-generation deep space rocket system on its first major test flight from the company’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. While the rocket successfully cleared its launch tower and climbed to an altitude of 39 kilometers, the vehicle eventually spun out of control and SpaceX said it was forced to blow it up in the sky for public safety.
Following the flight, news reports and social media posts suggested particles from the launch site had drifted to the nearby town of Port Isabel. Photos and video of the launchpad showed damaged tanks and a crater underneath the launch mount, where Starship’s powerful Raptor engines had likely shattered the surrounding concrete.
The apparent damage to the launchpad could complicate Musk’s hopes to launch Starship again in the next few months. While federal law gives commercial space companies wide latitude to operate, if any of the debris was seen as a threat to the public, it could prompt changes. Regardless of any findings on the damage, SpaceX will need to repair its launch site to fly again.
Musk tweeted last week that SpaceX had started building “a massive water-cooled, steel plate” to go under the launch mount to lessen the impact from Starship’s engines, but that it hadn’t been ready in time. He said in the same post that he still expected to be ready to launch in one to two months.
Hours after the launch, the Federal Aviation Administration announced that it would be overseeing a mishap investigation. “A return to flight of the Starship/Super Heavy vehicle is based on the FAA determining that any system, process or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety,” the FAA said in an emailed statement last week.
The debris flung by the launch triggered an Anomaly Response Plan that was part of SpaceX’s launch approval by the FAA, the agency said in an email Wednesday. The company must conduct a post-launch survey of vegetation and wildlife, remove debris from sensitive habitats and submit reports to various federal agencies.
The agency is legally responsible for protecting the public and private property from damage during launches, and made environmental mitigations part of the license.
“The FAA will ensure SpaceX complies with all required mitigations,” the agency said.
The Fish and Wildlife Service, which last year recommended mitigation steps to ease the environmental impact of the launch, said Wednesday that it was coordinating with the FAA on a site assessment, post-launch recommendations and compliance with the Endangered Species Act.
--With assistance from Alan Levin and Graham Starr.
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.
