Christmas Island locals who woke to see the spacecraft floating off the coast hope global attention will encourage tourists<\/p>\n
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Engineers from Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX are on their way to a remote Australian island to retrieve part of a Starship that dived into the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n
The spacecraft \u2013 now floating off the coast of Christmas Island \u2013 was launched in Texas on 24 July, in the 13th test of the technology. After reaching orbit and releasing 20 non-functioning satellites, the upper stage of the rocket re-entered the atmosphere, landing in the ocean.<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, the company has been working to retrieve the 52m long piece of spacecraft amid rough seas, before towing it to calmer waters for further study.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe SpaceX Recovery team successfully guided Starship to a location just off the coast of Christmas Island,\u201d the company posted on social media. \u201cA 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Watchorn, the chair of the Christmas Island Tourism Association, said most islanders woke on Tuesday to see what appeared to be three big ships. \u201cBut when you looked a bit closer, what looked a ship was a black rocket,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The arrival of the spacecraft had been the talk of the island since, he said. Locals hoped the global attention might encourage more tourists to come and visit the island, about 1,550km off Western Australia, and experience its \u201crugged, raw\u201d landscapes and unique biodiversity, including red crabs and fluffy flying foxes.<\/p>\n
The spectacle came just weeks after a separate incident of space debris, where six \u201cspace balls\u201d, likely from a foreign rocket body, washed ashore in north Queensland.<\/p>\n
Associate professor Alice Gorman, a space archaeologist at Flinders University, said the \u201crapid acceleration\u201d in the number of satellites being launched meant more rocket bodies and debris, both in space and falling back to Earth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve gone from having about 5,000 active satellites to having 16,000, around about 16,000 active satellites, of which about 10,000 are SpaceX constellations,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Upper stage rocket bodies could be dangerous, she said, because sometimes they contained toxic materials or leftover fuel, which could explode. The vehicle currently being towed off the coast of Christmas Island looked \u201cpretty intact\u201d, she said, which suggested there was less risk of fuel leaking out.<\/p>\n
An exclusion zone had been put in place to stop any recreational vessels getting too close, Watchorn said.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Australian Space Agency said \u201cSpaceX has towed the vehicle to Christmas Island after it re-entered and landed in international waters\u201d, and the federal government was engaging with the company on recovery efforts.<\/p>\n
Dr Hadrien Devillepoix, the lead scientist at the Desert Fireball Network at Curtin University, said the circumstances demonstrated the potential to retrieve and reuse parts of rockets, by splitting them into different stages.<\/p>\n