SpaceX can land its rockets in The Bahamas again \u2014 and will do so very soon, if all goes according to plan.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday (Feb. 17), the Civil Aviation Authority of The Bahamas (CAA-B) approved the resumption of Falcon 9<\/a> first-stage touchdowns in the nation’s waters. The decision ended a lengthy review spurred by a test flight mishap with SpaceX’s Starship<\/a> megarocket, which rained debris down on parts of the island nation nearly a year ago.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n “All requisite regulatory and environmental reviews and clearances have been completed in accordance with aerospace safety and operational protocols,” CAA-B officials wrote in an update<\/a> on the agency’s website.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n SpaceX and The Bahamas announced the rocket-landing collaboration in early 2025. It allows Falcon 9s flying from Florida’s Space Coast to reach new orbital trajectories, according to the company<\/a>. (Most Falcon 9 launches from Florida take a more easterly tack, and their boosters touch down in the open waters of the Atlantic.)<\/p>\n A Falcon 9 booster made its first Bahamian landing exactly one year ago, touching down on a drone ship in the nation’s Exuma Sound during a launch of SpaceX’s Starlink<\/a> internet satellites on Feb. 18, 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n SpaceX had hoped to make 20 Bahamas touchdowns last year, but the tally remained stuck at one. The Starship test-flight incident occurred on March 6<\/a>, and on April 15, Bahamian officials announced they had put the partnership on hold<\/a>, citing the need to conduct an environmental assessment of rocket landings.<\/p>\n But that assessment is now complete, with the results going SpaceX’s way. And the company plans to return to The Bahamas very soon.<\/p>\n A Falcon 9 first stage will land on a drone ship in Exuma Sound during the Starlink Group 10-36 mission, which will launch 29 of the broadband satellites to low Earth orbit<\/a> from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station<\/a>. Liftoff is currently scheduled for Thursday (Feb. 19), during a four-hour window that opens at 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT).<\/p>\n Last March’s Starship launch was the vehicle’s eighth test flight. The ninth, which flew in May, also featured an upper-stage breakup<\/a> (though not over the Caribbean). But Starship flights 10 and 11 \u2014 which launched in August and October, respectively \u2014 were both successful<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SpaceX can land its rockets in The Bahamas again \u2014 and will do so very soon, if all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-291081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}