Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday threatened legal action over debris and contamination from Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket launches near the US-Mexico border. “There is indeed contamination,” Sheinbaum said during her morning press conference, news agency AFP reported, adding that Mexico was reviewing “which international laws were being violated in order to file the necessary lawsuits”. Last week, a SpaceX Starship rocket exploded during a ground test at the company’s Starbase site in south Texas, near the border. The fireball was the latest blow to Musk’s Mars ambitions, as per a report by AFP. Mexican officials are conducting a “comprehensive review” of the rocket launches’ environmental impact on Tamaulipas, the neighbouring Mexican state. Despite conservation group concerns, the US Federal Aviation Administration approved an increase in annual Starship launches from five to 25 in May, saying the expansion would not harm the environment, the AFP report added. A lawsuit over SpaceX would add to Mexico’s recent disputes with US tech giants. In May, Sheinbaum’s government said it sued Google for renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” on Google Maps in the US, citing an executive order by Donald Trump.
