Why is Mexico threatening to sue Elon Musk over SpaceX debris?

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has threatened to writer Elon Musk’s SpaceX implicit falling debris from a rocket launch crossed the borderline successful the United States.

SpaceX said its efforts to retrieve debris from Mexico had been hindered by “trespassers”.

Here is much astir what is happening betwixt Mexico and SpaceX.

What happened?

A SpaceX “Starship” rocket, portion of Musk’s task to nonstop humans to space, exploded successful a elephantine fireball during a regular motorboat trial successful Texas connected June 19.

Starship rockets are 120 metres (400ft) gangly and made chiefly from stainless steel.

The rocket, called the Starship 36, went done “catastrophic nonaccomplishment and exploded” astatine the Starbase motorboat installation astatine 04:00 GMT, according to section Cameron County authorities.

The installation is located astatine Starbase, formerly called Boca Chica Village, successful Cameron County, Texas, adjacent to the US-Mexico border.

What does Mexico accidental astir contamination?

On Wednesday this week, Sheinbaum told her greeting quality league that “there is so contamination” which has been detected successful Mexico successful the aftermath of the SpaceX explosion.

She said Mexican officials are conducting a reappraisal of the biology effect caused to the Mexican authorities of Tamaulipas, a small much than 300km (190 miles) from Starbase.

Tamaulipas governor, Americo Villarreal Anaya, said authorities were examining “the internationally required distances are being respected successful bid to person these types of facilities, truthful that determination is nary hazard to municipality centres”, according to a study successful The New York Times.

“We are reviewing everything related to the launching of rockets that are precise adjacent to our border,” said Sheinbaum.

She added that Mexico is presently trying to find whether planetary laws had been violated truthful it tin record “the indispensable lawsuits”.

What does SpaceX say?

In an X station connected Thursday, SpaceX claimed its attempts to retrieve the fallen debris from Mexican territory had been hindered.

“Despite SpaceX’s attempts to retrieve the anomaly related debris, which is and remains the tangible spot of SpaceX, these attempts person been hindered by unauthorised parties trespassing connected backstage property,” the X relationship wrote. It did not clarify who these parties were oregon wherever they were “trespassing”.

SpaceX besides said determination were “no hazards to the surrounding area” from the rocket debris. “Previous autarkic tests conducted connected materials wrong Starship, including toxicity analyses, corroborate they airs nary chemical, biological, oregon toxicological risks.

“We person requested section and national assistance from the authorities of Mexico successful the recovery,” it added.

As antecedently stated, determination are nary hazards to the surrounding area. Previous autarkic tests conducted connected materials wrong Starship, including toxicity analyses, corroborate they airs nary chemical, biological, oregon toxicological risks.

And arsenic is the lawsuit earlier immoderate test, a safety… https://t.co/lJHGInE5vj

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 26, 2025

Where other person SpaceX rockets exploded?

In May, the Federal Aviation Administration successful the US granted SpaceX support to summation the fig of Starships it launches each twelvemonth from 5 to 25.

Later that month, a Starship prototype exploded implicit the Indian Ocean.

Before that, 2 Starships broke into pieces aft launching from Texas during trial flights successful January and March. In January, airlines were forced to divert flights to debar falling debris.

Does abstraction debris airs a information to the Earth?

In January this year, a red-hot 500kg (1,100lb) metallic object fell onto a colony successful Kenya’s Makueni county, 115km (70 miles) southeast of Nairobi. The Kenyan abstraction bureau said the debris was a fragment of a abstraction object.

On Monday, March 3, the Australian Space Agency released an advisory that a Russian rocket making re-entry into the Earth’s ambiance was expected to autumn into planetary waters disconnected the southeast seashore of Tasmania, causing a “sonic boom”. However, the pursuing day, the bureau said it had “monitored a abstraction debris re-entry implicit the southeast seashore of Tasmania” but was “unaware of immoderate reports oregon sightings of the debris”.

The likelihood of abstraction debris posing a information to people, craft oregon the Earth, successful general, is precise low. However, caller studies amusement that the magnitude of abstraction debris falling to the crushed is connected the rise.

A survey by researchers astatine the University of British Columbia successful Canada, published successful Scientific Reports successful January 2025, recovered that uncontrolled re-entries of rocket bodies oregon abstraction debris into the Earth are connected the emergence and whitethorn airs an accrued hazard of collision to aircraft.

Another study, called The Space Environment Report, released by the European Space Agency (ESA) successful March this year, recovered that astatine slightest 3 “intact”, human-made objects autumn backmost onto the Earth each day. This is too the respective fragments of abstraction debris that autumn onto the Earth.

NASA has warned that determination are millions of pieces of abstraction debris debased successful the Earth’s orbit, but determination are nary planetary abstraction laws astir cleaning up this debris.

Currently, individuals connected the crushed are not astatine a precocious hazard of being deed and injured by abstraction debris re-entering the Earth. The US nonprofit abstraction corporation, Aerospace, estimates this hazard to beryllium little than a one-in-one-trillion chance.