SpaceX’s test flight of Starship forced the rerouting of several passenger flights earlier this year, with visible sightings of falling rocket debris, according to documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
Starship lifted off on January 16 from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas. The rocket’s seventh test flight did not go according to plan; Starship’s upper stage suffered an engine glitch that forced an early shutdown, causing it to break apart and rain down bits of rocket debris over Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean.
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) documents reveal that the rocket’s mishap posed an “extreme safety risk” for three airplanes with a total of 450 passengers on board, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Air traffic controllers rerouted several airplanes to ensure their safety. The three flights, including a JetBlue plane headed to San Juan, Puerto Rico, were forced to fly through a temporary no-fly debris zone in order to avoid the risk of running out of fuel. Additionally, two planes were forced to fly close to one another and faced a risk of collision.
SpaceX responded to the Wall Street Journal report, calling it misleading.
Flight risk
Starship’s Flight 7 test caused significant disruptions to air traffic in the Caribbean region, but it wouldn’t be the first time the rocket has forced the rerouting or delays of commercial airplanes.
Before soaring to new heights with its 10th test flight in August, SpaceX’s Starship suffered an unfortunate losing streak, breaking apart upon reentry following one launch after another. Earlier in March, Flight 8 was cut short minutes after liftoff by a hardware failure in one of the Raptor engines. Starship exploded, prompting the FAA to halt air traffic in parts of Florida. Qantas Airlines was also reportedly forced to delay several flights between Australia and South Africa earlier this year due to warnings from U.S. authorities that covered a large portion of the Indian Ocean.
The recently acquired FAA documents offer the most detailed look at the chaos that often looms behind those disruptions. SpaceX allegedly failed to immediately call an official hotline to inform air traffic controllers of the failure, the FAA claims. Air traffic controllers in Miami were reportedly informed of the falling rocket debris when pilots reported sightings and had to navigate through it, according to the Wall Street Journal report.
SpaceX, however, denied the claims. “The reporters were clearly spoon-fed incomplete and misleading information from detractors with ulterior motives,” the company wrote on its X account. “At best, it shows a complete lack of understanding of the robust tools used by safety officials to manage airspace, which are well-defined, science-based, and have been highly effective at protecting public safety.”
“To be clear, for every Starship flight test, public safety has always been SpaceX’s top priority. No aircraft have been put at risk and any events that generated vehicle debris were contained within pre-coordinated response areas developed by [the U.S. Space Force] and implemented by [the FAA],” SpaceX continued. “These hazard areas cover a conservatively broad region, and any aircraft were appropriately routed in real-time around where debris was contained within the larger pre-coordinated hazard area.”
SpaceX plans to increase Starship’s flight cadence as it pushes forward with the development of its megarocket, and it continues to assert that public safety remains a priority. The rocket’s test flights, however, seem to tell a different story.
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