British officials told the U.S. they are concerned about the safety of SpaceX’s plans to fly its next Starship rocket over British territories in the Caribbean, where debris fell earlier this year after two of the company’s rockets exploded, according to documents reviewed by ProPublica.
The worries from the U.K. government, detailed in a letter to a top American diplomat on Wednesday, follow the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision last week to grant SpaceX’s request for a fivefold increase in the number of Starship launches allowed this year, from five to 25. Growing the number of launches of the most powerful rocket ever built is a priority for SpaceX head Elon Musk, who is also one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers.
Of particular concern to British officials is the public’s safety in the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands — all of which could fall under Starship 9’s flight path.
After the explosion in January, residents of the Turks and Caicos reported finding pieces of the rocket on beaches and roads. A car was also damaged in the Starship 7 accident. Seven weeks later, after receiving the FAA’s blessing to proceed, SpaceX launched Starship 8 from Boca Chica, Texas, but it too exploded after liftoff. Air traffic in the region was diverted, and burning streaks from the falling rocket were visible in the sky from the Bahamas and Florida’s coast.
The British letter to a U.S. State Department official, Ambassador Lisa Kenna, asks the U.S. to consider changing the launch site or trajectory of Starship 9. If that isn’t possible, the request — from Stephen Doughty, the United Kingdom’s minister of state for Europe, North America and U.K. Overseas Territories — asks that agencies like the FAA consider altering the launch’s timing to minimize safety risks and the economic impact for the British territories.
The letter also requests that the U.S. government provide the United Kingdom more information on increased safety measures that will be put in place before Starship 9 launches, and that British territories be given enough warning to communicate with the public about those measures.
“We have been working closely with US Government partners regarding Starship Flight 9 to protect the safety of the UK Overseas Territories and to ensure appropriate measures are in place,” a UK government spokesperson said Thursday in response to ProPublica’s questions about the letter.
The State Department did not respond to requests for comment.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. But the company has said it learns from its mistakes. “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability,” the company said after the Starship 8 accident. “We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests.”
Musk — who sees the uptick in launches as critical to the development of technology that could help land astronauts on the moon and ultimately Mars — has been less diplomatic.
He downplayed the January explosion as “barely a bump in the road” and seemed to brush off safety concerns, posting a video of the flaming debris field with the caption, “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”
SpaceX has not announced the date of the Starship 9 launch, but news reports have said it could happen as soon as May 21. The last explosion, however, is still under investigation.
In response to questions for this story, the FAA said it “works closely with our international partners to mitigate risks to public safety for FAA-licensed launches. We are in close contact and collaboration with the United Kingdom and the Turks and Caicos Islands, as well as other regional partners, as we continue to evaluate SpaceX’s license modification request for its proposed Starship Flight 9 launch.”
The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which licenses launches and reentries, is undergoing a leadership shakeup. Three top executives, including the head of the office, announced in April that they were accepting voluntary separation offers.
Musk has been leading efforts to shrink the federal government through the departures of thousands of federal workers. Critics say he has an inherent conflict of interest because his businesses are regulated by agencies such as the FAA and rely on their approvals.
Musk said in a February interview that “I’ll recuse myself if it is a conflict.” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said Thursday that “All administration officials will comply with conflict of interest requirements.”
Last year, the FAA proposed $633,000 in fines against SpaceX for violations related to two previous launches. Musk, in turn, accused the FAA of engaging in “lawfare” and threatened to sue it for “regulatory overreach.” The administrative case remains open.
The number of rocket launches has increased dramatically in recent years, leading pilots and academics to warn about a growing danger in the air for flights that have only minutes to get out of harm’s way when a mishap — as explosions and other failures are called in industry parlance — occurs.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia found in a study published in January that the risk space objects pose to aircraft is rising. They said that the chance of an “uncontrolled reentry” from a rocket over a year is as high as 26% for some large, busy areas of airspace, such as those found in the northeastern U.S., in northern Europe or near major cities in the Asia-Pacific region.
A large union for airplane pilots told FAA officials in January that the Starship 7 breakup “raises additional concerns about whether the FAA is providing adequate separation of space operations from airline flights,” according to a letter sent the day after the rocket exploded.
“The ability of the FAA Air Traffic Control to respond in a timely fashion to an unanticipated rocket anomaly needs to be further evaluated,” said the letter from the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents 79,000 pilots at 42 U.S. and Canadian airlines. It asked that flight crews receive more information about high-risk areas before a launch so they can “make an informed and timely decision about their need to potentially reject flight plans that route their aircraft underneath space vehicle trajectories.”
In a response, the FAA said it would review its processes to see whether more can be done to prepare flight crews before a launch.
Capt. Jason Ambrosi, the union’s president, said in a statement emailed to ProPublica that changes are necessary. “Any safety risk posed to commercial airline operations is unacceptable.”
