Employees walk across the bridge from parking to SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, the United States, July 17, 2024. /CFP
SpaceX is in discussions with U.S. and Australian authorities about landing and recovering a Starship rocket off the coast of Australia. This potential move marks a step toward expanding Elon Musk's company's operations in the region as part of growing security ties between the two countries.
The talks come after a Starship rocket made a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean for the first time in June, prompting SpaceX to seek more extensive testing opportunities.
The proposed plan involves launching the Starship from Texas, landing it in the sea near Australia, and then recovering it on Australian territory. This would require adjustments to U.S. export controls on advanced space technology.
The logistics of towing the Starship to a port on either Australia's western or northern coasts are still under consideration. There are also discussions about future plans for SpaceX in Australia, which may include launching rockets from or landing them directly on Australian soil.
SpaceX, along with the U.S. Space Force and the Australian Space Agency, have not yet commented on the discussions.
A still image taken from a SpaceX broadcast shows the SpaceX Starship on its fourth flight test reentering Earth's atmosphere on June 6, 2024, for a splashdown in the Indian Ocean. /CFP
SpaceX's Starship, a towering 400-foot reusable rocket, is designed for various missions, including launching satellites, landing astronauts on the moon and potentially delivering military cargo globally within 90 minutes. The June test flight was the most successful so far.
The U.S. Air Force's "Rocket Cargo" program envisions using such rockets for rapid global cargo delivery, a concept that the June Starship test helped validate. SpaceX has been studying this application under a $102 million Pentagon contract, with plans to advance to a more serious prototype effort with the U.S. Space Force by 2025.
(With input from Reuters)