A Texas man revealed that he took home a special souvenir from the recent SpaceX Super Heavy-Starship launch.
Nick Stacey, a zookeeper at Fragile Planet Wildlife Park in Los Fresnos, took to social media to share a series of pictures revealing the memento he came across while watching the launch at a distance.
SpaceX’s Super Heavy-Starship rocket blasted off as part of a third test flight conducted on the morning of March 14. The rocket, which is made up of a spacecraft christened Starship, along with a rocket booster carrying the moniker Super Heavy, took off from the private SpaceX Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, at 8:25 a.m. local time.
The most powerful rocket built by the company so far, the Starship traveled halfway around the Earth before starting its descent into the atmosphere, 45 minutes after the launch. It disintegrated while approaching its landing point in the Indian Ocean.
indicator_Species
SpaceX founder Elon Musk deemed the launch a success, writing in a post shared to X, formerly Twitter: “Yesterday was one step closer to life on Mars.”
One man who ended up getting pretty close to the action at the SpaceX Starbase facility was Stacey, who revealed on social media how he ended up stumbling on a hexagonal tile on a beach close to the launch site.
Newsweek has reached out to SpaceX on X and by phone for comment.
“I found a souvenir from [the] SpaceX Starship Superheavy,” Stacey wrote in a post shared to Facebook and Instagram. “Well we found a bunch technically but one perfect intact hexagonal tile with no real damage aside [from] some teeny abrasions!!!”
Stacey had evidently traveled to near the launch site to watch the rocket take off, though he admitted in the post that he didn’t get the clearest of views.
“The fog made takeoff a bit obscured,” he said. “But still an amazing launch regardless…crazy to see it first and have that delayed pressure wave of sound hit you in person!!!”
Newsweek reached out to Stacey on Reddit and Instagram for comment. Though he gave permission to include his pictures of the find, he has yet to respond to any questions.
Stacey has shared pictures of his find to Reddit under the handle u/indicator_species, with a post including the snaps racking up more than 48,000 upvotes and counting.
One Redditor suggested the piece could eventually become valuable “as space exploration becomes more commonplace.”
“As someone who collects stuff, it is REALLY important to document the provenance of this object,” they said. “Write up a description of when and where you found this object.. A confirmation from SpaceX would be really great but may be harder to get. And even some documentation like this Reddit post will help.
“Who knows how desirable this will be in 200 years, but if it is important, the world will be flooded with knock offs. Knowing this came from planet earth and documented that it is from the right time frame would go a long way in proving authenticity.”
Stacey has made no mention of what he plans to do with the tile.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.