By Aaron Bunch of AAP in Perth
Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX has retrieved a rocket that splashed down in the Indian Ocean near Christmas Island.
The space debris was towed to the remote island, about 1500 kilometres off the Western Australian coast, on Tuesday.
“After approx. 24 days at sea, the SpaceX Recovery team successfully guided Starship to a location just off the coast of Christmas Island,” the US aerospace manufacturer and launch services company said in a social media post.
“A team of SpaceX engineers is on their way to conduct additional analysis on the vehicle in calmer waters before attempting to return it to Starbase.”
Locals in the remote territory reportedly lined up along the rugged coastline to catch a glimpse of the 52-metre-long rocket as it was towed in.
Photographer Chris Bray, who usually focuses on wildlife, said it was not something he ever expected to see.
“This SpaceX Starship was towed into the protected waters around Christmas Island this morning after an unusually gentle landing in the Indian Ocean almost a month ago left it unexpectedly floating and potentially recoverable instead of the usual explosion!” he said on an Instagram post on Tuesday.
“Cool to see! So BIG!”
Bray’s aerial photos show the mostly black-coloured rocket being towed by cable attached to two large ships.
The rocket, which has three large and three small rocket nozzles, appears to have lost some of its outer coating, but was otherwise intact.
The SpaceX website said the company’s Starship spacecraft and super heavy rocket were a reusable transport system designed to carry crew and cargo into “orbit, the moon, Mars and beyond”.
It’s not the first space debris to land in WA.
In 2023, a large gold-coloured dome-like object was found on a beach, about 250km north of Perth.
The Australian Space Agency later concluded it was an expended third stage of a polar satellite launch vehicle operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation.
In 1979, parts of NASA’s Skylab space station crashed to earth near the sleepy towns of Esperance and Balladonia, triggering a global media frenzy.
