Debris From SpaceX Explosion Coated Texas Town and Smashed Into Wildlife Refuge

On April 20, Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship exploded over the Gulf of Mexico three minutes into its inaugural launch. While the fiery spectacle caught the attention of the public, it was the eruptive ground-level portion of the launch that has been attracting more intense scrutiny from the government and environmentalists.

Last Thursday’s blastoff from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, blew a cloud of shattered concrete over neighboring Port Isabel, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Aubry Buzek, as Reuters reported. A report from the agency said that and the big chunks of metal and concrete that were thrown thousands of feet onto the grounds of a national wildlife refuge, causing a three-and-a-half acre fire, have led to new concerns about the environmental impact of the company’s operations.

“They contemplated debris from these launches, but not part of the launch pad itself being blown out miles away and scattered across the landscape,” said Jared Margolis, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, as reported by Reuters. “What happened is not what they anticipated.”

The agency’s report said no people were injured, and there was no evidence of wildlife having been hurt by the launch.

“I walk through the dunes, towards the windy mudflat just south of the launch pad. There’s debris spread nearly a mile around — some the size of golf balls, others as big as engine blocks,” Gaige Davila of Texas Public Radio said on NPR’s All Things Considered. “The entire bed of this mudflat is covered with pieces of concrete and rebar. Some have impacted the ground so hard that they’ve left holes that are about 2 1/2 to 3 feet deep and 6 feet across.”

Despite the explosion and damaging debris, SpaceX called the mission a success for having gotten Starship off the ground on its first attempted flight.

Environmentalists cited the report as proof that further investigation was needed into potential dangers to wildlife and public safety before other launches of the spacecraft are attempted at the site, Reuters reported.

Starship is slated to become a part of NASA’s Artemis program, which has plans to bring astronauts back to the moon with its sights set on humans eventually traveling all the way to Mars.

Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration said a legally-mandated “mishap” investigation had been opened, which effectively grounded the Starship rocket until a root cause of any failures is found and corrective action is taken.

Musk said the next SpaceX launch will include a steel foundation and water-cooling system.

Last year, an environmental impact assessment for the Starbase facility was approved by the agency that anticipated debris from launches extending about a square mile from the launchpad.

According to Margolis, the metal and concrete thrown into the air during the recent launch likely landed in critical habitat for the endangered piping plover. Margolis added that the problems from the launch were proof that the original environmental impact assessment was insufficient.

Last week Musk suggested the company could have planned improvements to the launch site finished before the next attempted launch in a month or two. “We are not against space exploration or this company,” Margolis told CNBC. “But while we are looking to the stars, we should not readily sacrifice communities, habitat, and species.”