While the spectacle of SpaceX's new Starship rocket blowing up over the Gulf of Mexico riveted the public's attention, it was the explosive nature of the launch at ground level that was drawing heightened scrutiny from the government this week.
in South Texas sent a cloud of pulverized concrete raining over a small town nearby, federal regulators said, raising fresh questions about the environmental impact of ramped-up launch operations at the site.
"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. "What happened is not what they anticipated.", aimed at returning astronauts to the moon in the next few years as a stepping stone to eventual human exploration of Mars.
Despite the outcome, SpaceX hailed the aborted mission as a qualified success. The company said it was satisfied in getting Starship off the ground in its maiden test flight, a valuable source of data for further development of the spacecraft. The FAA last week said it had opened a "mishap" investigation, as required by law, effectively grounding the rocket ship until SpaceX determines a root cause for any failures and takes corrective action.On the ground, the force of roughly 30 rocket engines firing at full power pummeled the launchpad floor at liftoff, carving a crater several feet deep into the ground.
Concrete chunks and metal shrapnel flung thousands of feet from the launch pad would likely have landed in critical habitat for the piping plover, a shorebird on the endangered species list, Margolis said.
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SpaceX Starship launch under FAA investigation after raining potentially hazardous debris on homes and beachesBen Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like weird animals and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.
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