{"id":1469,"date":"2025-06-27T15:35:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T15:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/06\/27\/why-is-mexico-threatening-to-sue-elon-musk-over-spacex-debris\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T15:35:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T15:35:13","slug":"why-is-mexico-threatening-to-sue-elon-musk-over-spacex-debris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/06\/27\/why-is-mexico-threatening-to-sue-elon-musk-over-spacex-debris\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is Mexico threatening to sue Elon Musk over SpaceX debris?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has threatened to sue Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX over falling debris from a rocket launch<\/a> across the border in the United States.<\/p>\n

SpaceX said its efforts to recover debris from Mexico had been hindered by \u201ctrespassers\u201d.<\/p>\n

Here is more about what is happening between Mexico and SpaceX.<\/p>\n

What happened?<\/h2>\n

A SpaceX \u201cStarship\u201d rocket, part of Musk\u2019s project to send humans to space, exploded in a giant fireball during a routine launch test in Texas on June 19.<\/p>\n

Starship rockets are 120 metres (400ft) tall and made primarily from stainless steel.<\/p>\n

The rocket, called the Starship 36, went through \u201ccatastrophic failure and exploded\u201d at the Starbase launch facility at 04:00 GMT, according to local Cameron County authorities.<\/p>\n

The facility is located at Starbase, formerly called Boca Chica Village, in Cameron County, Texas, close to the US-Mexico border.<\/p>\n

What does Mexico say about contamination?<\/h2>\n

On Wednesday this week, Sheinbaum told her morning news conference that \u201cthere is indeed contamination\u201d which has been detected in Mexico in the aftermath of the SpaceX explosion.<\/p>\n

She said Mexican officials are conducting a review of the environmental effect caused to the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, a little more than 300km (190 miles) from Starbase.<\/p>\n

Tamaulipas governor, Americo Villarreal Anaya, said authorities were examining \u201cthe internationally required distances are being respected in order to have these types of facilities, so that there is no risk to urban centres\u201d, according to a report in The New York Times.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are reviewing everything related to the launching of rockets that are very close to our border,\u201d said Sheinbaum.<\/p>\n

She added that Mexico is currently trying to determine whether international laws had been violated so it can file \u201cthe necessary lawsuits\u201d.<\/p>\n

What does SpaceX say?<\/h2>\n

In an X post on Thursday, SpaceX claimed its attempts to recover the fallen debris from Mexican territory had been hindered.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite SpaceX\u2019s attempts to recover the anomaly related debris, which is and remains the tangible property of SpaceX, these attempts have been hindered by unauthorised parties trespassing on private property,\u201d the X account wrote. It did not clarify who these parties were or where they were \u201ctrespassing\u201d.<\/p>\n

SpaceX also said there were \u201cno hazards to the surrounding area\u201d from the rocket debris. \u201cPrevious independent tests conducted on materials inside Starship, including toxicity analyses, confirm they pose no chemical, biological, or toxicological risks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have requested local and federal assistance from the government of Mexico in the recovery,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n

\n

As previously stated, there are no hazards to the surrounding area. Previous independent tests conducted on materials inside Starship, including toxicity analyses, confirm they pose no chemical, biological, or toxicological risks.<\/p>\n

And as is the case before any test, a safety\u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/lJHGInE5vj<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 26, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What environmental damage could be caused by exploding rockets?<\/h2>\n

There are several ways debris from rockets harms the environment, according to experts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe environmental impacts that we\u2019re most concerned about include climate and the ozone hole,\u201d Eloise Marais, atmospheric chemist at the Department of Geography at University College London, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

\u201cDepletion of the protective ozone layer results from chemicals released by rockets during launch that can undergo reactions that deplete ozone,\u201d Marais added, explaining that air pollutants such as particles of soot, which can absorb sunlight and warm the atmosphere, are released during rocket launches.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarship rockets use a relatively new propellant \u2013 liquid methane. We don\u2019t actually have measurements of the amount of pollution that this propellant produces during launch, so it\u2019s hard to put solid numbers on the potential harm of this specific rocket to the atmosphere,\u201d Marais said.<\/p>\n

Marais said that the environmental impact of space missions is likely to worsen \u201cif the speculated growth in the space sector is realised and there remains lack of suitable space governance to regulate pollutant emissions\u201d.<\/p>\n

General space debris falling to Earth can also cause environmental damage. Marais said satellites, for example, are disposed of by burning them up during high-speed atmospheric re-entry. Ideally, the satellites burn up entirely, minimising any risk to people or property on the ground. However, this process still releases harmful chemicals which can harm the ozone layer.<\/p>\n

Where else have SpaceX rockets exploded?<\/h2>\n

In May, the Federal Aviation Administration in the US granted SpaceX permission to increase the number of Starships it launches each year from five to 25.<\/p>\n

Later that month, a Starship prototype<\/a> exploded over the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n

Before that, two Starships broke into pieces after launching from Texas\u00a0during test flights in January<\/a> and March<\/a>. In January, airlines were forced to divert flights to avoid falling debris.<\/p>\n

Does space debris pose a danger to the Earth?<\/h2>\n

In January this year, a red-hot 500kg (1,100lb) metallic object<\/a> fell onto a village in Kenya\u2019s Makueni county, 115km (70 miles) southeast of Nairobi. The Kenyan space agency said the debris was a fragment of a space object.<\/p>\n

On Monday, March 3, the Australian Space Agency released an advisory that a Russian rocket making re-entry into the Earth\u2019s atmosphere was expected to fall into international waters off the southeast coast of Tasmania, causing a \u201csonic boom\u201d. However, the following day, the agency said it had \u201cmonitored a space debris re-entry over the southeast coast of Tasmania\u201d but was \u201cunaware of any reports or sightings of the debris\u201d.<\/p>\n

The likelihood of space debris posing a danger to people, aircraft or the Earth, in general, is very low. However, recent studies show that the amount of space debris falling to the ground is rising.<\/p>\n

A study by researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada, published in Scientific Reports<\/a> in January 2025, found that uncontrolled re-entries of rocket bodies or space debris into the Earth are increasing and may pose an increased risk of collision to aircraft.<\/p>\n

Another study, called The Space Environment Report, released by the European Space Agency (ESA) in March this year, found that at least three \u201cintact\u201d, human-made objects fall back onto the Earth every day. This is besides the several fragments of space debris that fall onto the Earth.<\/p>\n

NASA has warned that millions of pieces of space debris are low in the Earth\u2019s orbit, but there are no international space laws about cleaning up this debris.<\/p>\n

Currently, individuals on the ground are not at a high risk of being hit and injured by space debris re-entering the Earth. The US nonprofit space corporation, Aerospace, estimates this risk to be less than a one-in-one-trillion chance.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has threatened to sue Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX over falling debris from a rocket launch across the border in the United States. SpaceX said its efforts to recover debris from Mexico had been hindered by \u201ctrespassers\u201d. Here is more about what is happening between Mexico and SpaceX. What happened? A SpaceX \u201cStarship\u201d … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}