Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has threatened to sue Elon Musk’s SpaceX over falling debris from a rocket launch across the border in the United States.

SpaceX said its efforts to recover debris from Mexico had been hindered by “trespassers”.

Here is more about what is happening between Mexico and SpaceX.

What happened?

A SpaceX “Starship” rocket, part of Musk’s project to send humans to space, exploded in a giant fireball during a routine launch test in Texas on June 19.

Starship rockets are 120 metres (400ft) tall and made primarily from stainless steel.

The rocket, called the Starship 36, went through “catastrophic failure and exploded” at the Starbase launch facility at 04:00 GMT, according to local Cameron County authorities.

The facility is located at Starbase, formerly called Boca Chica Village, in Cameron County, Texas, close to the US-Mexico border.

What does Mexico say about contamination?

On Wednesday this week, Sheinbaum told her morning news conference that “there is indeed contamination” which has been detected in Mexico in the aftermath of the SpaceX explosion.

She said Mexican officials are conducting a review of the environmental effect caused to the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, a little more than 300km (190 miles) from Starbase.

Tamaulipas governor, Americo Villarreal Anaya, said authorities were examining “the internationally required distances are being respected in order to have these types of facilities, so that there is no risk to urban centres”, according to a report in The New York Times.

“We are reviewing everything related to the launching of rockets that are very close to our border,” said Sheinbaum.

She added that Mexico is currently trying to determine whether international laws had been violated so it can file “the necessary lawsuits”.

What does SpaceX say?

In an X post on Thursday, SpaceX claimed its attempts to recover the fallen debris from Mexican territory had been hindered.

“Despite SpaceX’s attempts to recover the anomaly related debris, which is and remains the tangible property of SpaceX, these attempts have been hindered by unauthorised parties trespassing on private property,” the X account wrote. It did not clarify who these parties were or where they were “trespassing”.

SpaceX also said there were “no hazards to the surrounding area” from the rocket debris. “Previous independent tests conducted on materials inside Starship, including toxicity analyses, confirm they pose no chemical, biological, or toxicological risks.

“We have requested local and federal assistance from the government of Mexico in the recovery,” it added.

As previously stated, there are no hazards to the surrounding area. Previous independent tests conducted on materials inside Starship, including toxicity analyses, confirm they pose no chemical, biological, or toxicological risks.

And as is the case before any test, a safety… https://t.co/lJHGInE5vj

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) June 26, 2025

Where else have SpaceX rockets exploded?

In May, the Federal Aviation Administration in the US granted SpaceX permission to increase the number of Starships it launches each year from five to 25.

Later that month, a Starship prototype exploded over the Indian Ocean.

Before that, two Starships broke into pieces after launching from Texas during test flights in January and March. In January, airlines were forced to divert flights to avoid falling debris.

Does space debris pose a danger to the Earth?

In January this year, a red-hot 500kg (1,100lb) metallic object fell onto a village in Kenya’s Makueni county, 115km (70 miles) southeast of Nairobi. The Kenyan space agency said the debris was a fragment of a space object.

On Monday, March 3, the Australian Space Agency released an advisory that a Russian rocket making re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere was expected to fall into international waters off the southeast coast of Tasmania, causing a “sonic boom”. However, the following day, the agency said it had “monitored a space debris re-entry over the southeast coast of Tasmania” but was “unaware of any reports or sightings of the debris”.

The likelihood of space debris posing a danger to people, aircraft or the Earth, in general, is very low. However, recent studies show that the amount of space debris falling to the ground is on the rise.

A study by researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada, published in Scientific Reports in January 2025, found that uncontrolled re-entries of rocket bodies or space debris into the Earth are on the rise and may pose an increased risk of collision to aircraft.

Another study, called The Space Environment Report, released by the European Space Agency (ESA) in March this year, found that at least three “intact”, human-made objects fall back onto the Earth every day. This is besides the several fragments of space debris that fall onto the Earth.

NASA has warned that there are millions of pieces of space debris low in the Earth’s orbit, but there are no international space laws about cleaning up this debris.

Currently, individuals on the ground are not at a high risk of being hit and injured by space debris re-entering the Earth. The US nonprofit space corporation, Aerospace, estimates this risk to be less than a one-in-one-trillion chance.

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Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old who soared to the lead in the New York City mayoral Democratic primary, describes himself as a democratic socialist. But some politicians and social media posts falsely labelled him a communist.

President Donald Trump called Mamdani “a 100% Communist Lunatic”, in a June 25 Truth Social post.

Nick Sortor, a conservative podcast host, wrote June 23 on X, “Zohran Mamdani is not even a socialist. He’s a full on COMMUNIST,” sharing a video clip of Mamdani calling for a network of city-owned grocery stores. “Even FURTHER left than Bernie Sanders. He wants government-run grocery stores.”

Ben Shapiro, cofounder of conservative website The Daily Wire, said on his podcast, “The big news of the day: A communist is likely to be the next mayor of New York City.”

Representative Elise Stefanik also wrote on X that Mamdani is a “communist”.

Mamdani’s platform calls for making transportation, housing and groceries more affordable, but experts say he hasn’t espoused key tenets of communism, such as government takeover of industry and private property.

“Mamdani is NOT a communist,” wrote Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University professor of international studies, in an email to PolitiFact. “Communism involves a centrally planned economy, with no market forces. Prices and quantities are set by a central government authority. There is no democratic political competition, and instead a single party rules the country. He is not calling for any of this.”

Accusing Democrats of being communists or communist sympathisers is a frequent misleading attack line by some Republicans. It is a red scare tactic that has existed in US politics for decades, but has been transformed by the success of some democratic socialists, including US Senator Bernie Sanders.

Mamdani made national headlines June 24 after former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo conceded the primary. When the city completes the ranked choice voting process, Mamdani is expected to win. Mamdani’s office did not respond to our requests for comment.

In November, Mamdani will face Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, the founder of civilian crime-fighting group Guardian Angels, and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent. Cuomo left open the door to running as an independent.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Mamdani’s platform calls for some city-owned grocery stores, other affordability policies

Mamdani, who represents part of the Queens borough in the New York State Assembly, identifies as a democratic socialist.

The New York City Democratic Socialists of America endorsed Mamdani, who is a member.

The group defines its goal as “to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation”, and to have “a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighbourhoods, and society”.

Mamdani’s platform includes freezing rent for tenants in buildings with preexisting caps on price increases between lease terms. He also proposed creating city-owned grocery stores, and said in a June interview with Spectrum News NY1 that he would start with one grocery store in each borough modelled on municipality-owned stores in Kansas.

He also proposed free buses and child care, and raising the corporate tax rate and the minimum wage.

Mamdani does not call for getting rid of private ownership. One of the goals included on his website is to “make it faster, easier, and cheaper to start and run a business”.

He told The New York Times that he changed his mind about the role of the private market in housing construction, saying, “I clearly recognise now that there is a very important role to be played.” The story links to Mamdani’s website, which calls for the public sector to build affordable housing but not take over all housing.

What are the differences between communism and democratic socialism?

We sent highlights from Mamdani’s platform to seven experts across academic disciplines including political science, law and anthropology. None concluded that Mamdani is a communist.

“The idea that Mamdani is a communist is an absurd slander,” said Geoffrey Kurtz, associate professor of political science at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York.

When US politicians use the term democratic socialism, they are referring to generous social insurance programmes often available in European countries, such as heavily subsidised child care, along with high tax rates, if needed, to pay for education and healthcare.

Mamdani doesn’t seek to do away with private property or advocate a government takeover of any industry, said Ted Henken, a Baruch College professor. Instead, Mamdani proposes targeted interventions to tackle high living costs in New York City, Henken said.

“The New Yorkers who support him seem to do so not because of any communist ideology on his or their part, but because he proposes to address this crisis of affordability,” Henken said.

“For example, his city-run grocery store idea does not propose to take over or do away with the private grocery chains (they already receive city subsidies) but to complement them with nonprofit city-run stores,” Henken said.

Although Mamdani said in a campaign TikTok video that he would “redirect funds from corporate supermarkets to city-owned grocery stores”, he did not say he would get rid of corporate markets. Mamdani also said city-owned markets would work with privately owned small businesses and farms.

Political theory experts said many of Mamdani’s proposals have existed in other democracies for decades.

“Many western democracies – from France to Canada – have policies such as free or heavily subsidised child care and public transit,” said Oxana Shevel, a Tufts University associate professor of comparative politics.

Under a communist agenda, the government would own everything and entirely control prices, not only rent control or operating some supermarkets. And under communism, there are no political parties other than the communist party.

“This is not what he’s advocating,” Shevel said. “So no, he’s not a ‘communist’.”

Democratic socialism emerged as an alternative to communism, said Harvey Klehr, an Emory University expert on the history of American communism.

“At least in theory, they reject such communist concepts as the vanguard of the proletariat and the communist hostility to representative democracy, as well as the communist belief in state ownership of the means of production,” Klehr said. “That said, there are a number of issues on which they agree, including hostility to capitalism.”

Experts said there are reasonable critiques of Mamdani’s proposals, but that doesn’t make his proposals communist.

Our ruling

Trump said Mamdani is a communist.

Mamdani’s mayoral platform proposes making New York City more affordable, including via free buses and day care, rent control and city-owned grocery stores. That is not akin to communism, a system in which the government controls the means of production and takes over private businesses. Mamdani has not called for the elimination of private ownership.

He also hasn’t called for eliminating democracy and political parties, another tenet of communism.

We rate this statement False.

Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this fact-check

Japan condemned US President Donald Trump for comparing recent US strikes on Iran to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II.

“That hit ended the war,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing.”

About 140,000 people died when the US dropped atomic bombs on the two southern Japanese cities in August 1945. Survivors live with psychological trauma and heightened cancer risk to this day.

If Trump’s comments “justifies the dropping of the atomic bomb, it is extremely regrettable for us as a city that was bombed,” said Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki.

Trump’s comments are “unacceptable”, said Mimaki Toshiyuki, an atomic bomb survivor who co-chairs the Nobel Peace Prize-winning advocacy group Nihon Hidankyo, according to public broadcaster NHK.

“I’m really disappointed. All I have is anger,” said another member of the group, Teruko Yokoyama, in a Kyodo News report.

Survivors of the atomic bomb attacks staged a protest in Hiroshima on Thursday, demanding Trump retract his statement.

Lawmakers in Hiroshima also passed a resolution on Thursday rejecting statements that justify the use of atomic bombs. They also called for armed conflicts to be settled peacefully.

Asked if Tokyo would lodge a complaint over Trump’s remarks, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hayashi Yoshimasa said that Japan has repeatedly expressed its position on atomic bombs to Washington.

Trump’s comments on Wednesday came as he pushed back on a leaked intelligence report that said US strikes on Iran only set its nuclear programme back by a few months.

Trump had insisted that the strikes “obliterated” the programme and set it back “decades” – a claim backed by CIA director John Ratcliffe.

Japan is the only country in the world to have been hit by a nuclear attack and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki stir painful memories.

In Hiroshima, a peace flame that symbolises the country’s opposition to nuclear weapons has been burning since the 1960s while a clock that counts the number of days since the world’s last nuclear attack is displayed at the entrance of a war museum.

World leaders who visit Hiroshima are also asked to make paper cranes to affirm their commitment to peace.