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Sunday, March 16, 2025

Government says debris from rocket fell in Bahamian airspace

by

Newsdesk
8 days ago
20250307

The Ba­hamas gov­ern­ment Fri­day said of­fi­cials from the SpaceX are due here fol­low­ing Thurs­day night’s ex­plo­sion of a SpaceX’s Star­ship rock­et with de­bris falling in­to Ba­hami­an air­space.

“The de­bris from Star­ship fell in­to our air­space in the South­ern Ba­hamas. Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, SpaceX con­tin­gency mea­sures, which in­cludes im­me­di­ate and con­tin­u­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Ba­hami­an of­fi­cials,” the gov­ern­ment said in a state­ment.

The gov­ern­ment said it has since been as­sured by SpaceX that the de­bris con­tains no tox­ic ma­te­ri­als and that the de­bris will have not ex­pect­ed to have any sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on ma­rine life or wa­ter qual­i­ty.

“SpaceX teams will be in The Ba­hamas to con­duct full de­bris re­cov­ery and cleanup ef­forts. We ex­pect our ap­plic­a­ble agen­cies, in­clu­sive of the De­part­ment of En­vi­ron­men­tal Plan­ning and Pro­tec­tion will ob­serve the clean-up ac­tiv­i­ties.”

The SpaceX’s Star­ship space­craft ex­plod­ed on Thurs­day min­utes af­ter lift­ing off from Texas, doom­ing an at­tempt to de­ploy mock satel­lites in the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive fail­ure this year for Elon Musk’s Mars rock­et pro­gramme.

Sev­er­al videos on so­cial me­dia showed fiery de­bris streak­ing through the dusk skies near south Flori­da and the Ba­hamas af­ter Star­ship’s breakup in space, which oc­curred short­ly af­ter it be­gan to spin un­con­trol­lably with its en­gines cut off.

“On the evening of March 6, 2025, SpaceX launched its Star­ship rock­et from Star­base in Texas, Unit­ed States. Min­utes af­ter take-off, con­tact was lost with the space­craft, and de­bris was sub­se­quent­ly ob­served stream­ing over The Ba­hamas,” ac­cord­ing to the state­ment is­sued by the gov­ern­ment.

“The Ba­hamas has no reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ty un­der The Ba­hamas’ Civ­il Avi­a­tion (Space Flight and Re-En­try) Reg­u­la­tions, 2025 over SpaceX’s Star­ship op­er­a­tions and this in­ci­dent is not part of The Ba­hamas’ ex­ist­ing re­la­tion­ship with SpaceX’s Fal­con 9 pro­gramme, which in­volves con­trolled boost­er land­ings in Ba­hami­an wa­ters fol­low­ing launch­es from Kennedy Space in Flori­da. The FAA is­sues the launch li­cense for Star­ship ex­er­cis­es,” the stater­ment added.

The in­ci­dent re­sult­ed in sev­er­al flight de­lays on Thurs­day and the gov­ern­ment state­ment said that “The Ba­hamas was re­quired un­der an ex­ist­ing treaty to is­sue a No­tice to Mariners (NOT­MAR) for mar­itime safe­ty co­or­di­na­tion.

The gov­ern­ment said it want­ed to “em­pha­size that this Star­ship is not a part of the Ba­hamas’ Fal­con 9 pro­gramme.

“The gov­ern­ment of The Ba­hamas re­mains en­gaged with SpaceX and will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion to en­sure prop­er re­cov­ery ac­tions are car­ried out,” the state­ment added.

Last month, the Ba­hami­an tourism of­fi­cials say they ex­pect the coun­try to be­come a key play­er in the rapid­ly grow­ing space tourism sec­tor, as its first in­ter­na­tion­al rock­et land­ing is took place off the coast of The Ex­u­mas.

The glob­al space tourism in­dus­try, SpaceX, said that its Fal­con 9 rock­et was launched from Space Launch Com­plex 40 at Cape Canaver­al Space Force Sta­tion in Flori­da.

Ba­hami­an of­fi­cials said that the coun­try had been de­signed as the ex­clu­sive lo­ca­tion for the first in­ter­na­tion­al event, show­cas­ing the coun­try’s unique po­si­tion as the on­ly des­ti­na­tion where the pub­lic can wit­ness Fal­con 9 boost­er land­ings from a prime van­tage point.

“This his­toric col­lab­o­ra­tion with SpaceX fur­ther re­in­forces our com­mit­ment to in­no­va­tion and our ded­i­ca­tion to ex­pand­ing tourism of­fer­ings,” said Tourism, In­vest­ments and Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter, I. Chester Coop­er.

The au­thor­i­ties said that the Mem­o­ran­dum of Co­op­er­a­tion re­cent­ly signed be­tween the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty Ba­hamas (CAAB) and the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FAA), which took ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 15 this year, agreed to es­tab­lish and main­tain a frame­work for the over­sight and reg­u­la­tion of aero­space ac­tiv­i­ty. The Cab­i­net has ap­proved 19 more land­ings through­out 2025, sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval.

In ad­di­tion, SpaceX will con­duct quar­ter­ly STEM (Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­gi­neer­ing, and Math­e­mat­ics) and space-fo­cused sem­i­nars that boost STEM ed­u­ca­tion in The Ba­hamas, ben­e­fit­ing stu­dents and in­struc­tors. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, SpaceX will give a one mil­lion US dol­lar do­na­tion to the Uni­ver­si­ty of The Ba­hamas for STEM ed­u­ca­tion.

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