This month's Starship explosion has politicians and environmentalists in an uproar due to the serious impact it allegedly had on the surrounding land and waters.
As the New York Times reports, this month's Starship explosion resulted not only in a ton of debris raining down across the border into Mexico, but also, apparently, in mass marine wildlife death.
According to activists in Tamaulipas, a Mexican state situated south of Starbase, SpaceX's newly-incorporated company town, the explosion — which was the fourth such Starship mishap this year — ended up killing multiple dolphins and sea turtles.
In a translated statement to Mexico's Milenio newspaper, Jesus Elias Ibarra Rodriguez, the president of the Conibo Global AC conservationist group, described the macabre scene after the latest Starship explosion.
"In the last three days, we've already received reports of two dead dolphins and about a thousand fish on Bagdad Beach," Rodriguez said. "The bodies of some turtles have also surfaced, and we want to prevent an ecocide because so much wildlife is at risk."
Though there has been ample damage to the wildlife and vegetation surrounding Starbase over the years, the devastation from this latest Starship failure appears to be the worst of the bunch.
Along with the alleged animal deaths — whose exact cause, at this point, remains unknown — SpaceX is also in big trouble with the Mexican government over all the debris that rained down into that country's territory from the explosion.
In a news conference after the fiery failure, Mexico's president, Claudia Sheinbaum, issued a stark threat to SpaceX.
"We are reviewing everything related to the launching of rockets that are very close to our border," the Mexican president said, per the NYT. Sheinbaum added that her government is looking into what exact international laws SpaceX broke so that it can "file any necessary claims" against the Elon Musk-owned company.
SpaceX, meanwhile, has declined to take any accountability for the explosion's damaging aftermath.
"There are no hazards to the surrounding area," the company claimed in an X post. "Previous independent tests conducted on materials inside Starship, including toxicity analyses, confirm they pose no chemical, biological, or toxicological risks."
It's too soon to tell what consequences, if any, SpaceX will face for the explosion — but Mexico doesn't seem to be backing down from the fight.
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