Space junk surprises Christmas Island locals as two ships needed to bring it ahsore

Christmas Island locals have woken to an unusual sight with a large rocket, belonging to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, towed in on Tuesday morning by two large ships.

The rocket, named Starship, launched from Texas last month before making a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean days later.

Starship landed in international waters far off the Western Australia coastline and increasingly rough seas hampered earlier attempts to retrieve the rocket.

Musk publicly confirmed there was a combined effort to retrieve the rocket involving his company as well as the Australian government and Australian Space Agency.

“The thing that struck me the most was just how big it is, it’s like enormous,” photographer Chris Bray told 9News.

“[It’s] 50-something metres long, but it’s not until you see it floating out there in the water behind the ship it looks big.”

It’s now sitting on the island’s northern side until a long-term solution is found.

Musk launched the Starship program in 2012, with this most recent launch being the 13th test flight.

After deploying a new Starlink satellite into space, Starship successfully survived atmospheric re-entry and performed a perfect splashdown.

The next test flight, named Flight 14, is tentatively scheduled for September and aims to have the rocket’s upper stage return to the launch tower for the first time.