WASHINGTON - Injury rates at SpaceX facilities continued to exceed an industry average in 2023, according to a Reuters review of safety data reported to U.S. regulators by the space venture controlled by billionaire Elon Musk.
"NASA should be concerned about the quality of the work," said David Michaels, a former OSHA administrator who is now a professor at The George Washington University. High injury rates, he added, can be "an indicator of poor production quality."OSHA didn't respond to questions about SpaceX's injury rate.
Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's chief operating officer, in March reposted a video on social media of emergency chutes being tested at a company site in Florida. Commenting on the video on X, the social media company that's also controlled by Musk, she wrote that "astronaut and personnel safety is SpaceX's highest priority."
NASA estimates 100 million pieces of debris from the ISS, satellites and other spacecraft are hovering over the Earth. Former NASA astronaut Terry Virts says some of this debris can fall to Earth and explains why there’s no viable plan to remove it.In her three decades of working with elephant seals, Dr. Marcela Uhart had never seen anything like the scene on the beaches of Argentina’s Valdés Peninsula last October.