OSHA Investigates Worker Death at SpaceX Starbase Site

A worker died at SpaceX’s Starbase launch site in South Texas on May 15. m. local time, citing OSHA and local officials. The Wall Street Journal later reported that the county sheriff confirmed a worker died. OSHA confirmed it is investigating the apparent accident.

Representatives for the nearby Brownsville police and fire departments did not respond to requests for comment. SpaceX and the City of Starbase did not respond to requests for comment.

The circumstances of the worker’s death are not immediately clear. OSHA stated it will not release more information until its investigation is complete, which could take months. The death comes just a few days ahead of the first planned launch of SpaceX’s upgraded Starship rocket.

SpaceX has long dealt with worker safety problems at its Starbase site, which handles Starship prototype launches and is an active construction zone. In 2025, TechCrunch analyzed OSHA data and determined the Texas launch site had an injury rate that far outpaced those of industry rivals, and was the most dangerous of SpaceX’s worksites.

A 2023 Reuters investigation uncovered dozens of previously-unreported injuries and a worker death in 2014 at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas test site. In January, OSHA issued seven “serious” safety violations for, among other things, not properly inspecting a crane before it collapsed at Starbase last June.

The safety agency assessed the maximum financial penalty on six of those seven violations, totaling $115,850. SpaceX is contesting those penalties, federal records show. The company has been hit with multiple lawsuits related to injuries sustained at Starbase in recent years.

In December, an employee of one of SpaceX’s subcontractors sued after he was crushed by a large metal support dropped from a crane. The worker, Eduardo Cavazos, suffered a broken hip, knee, and tibia, and OSHA opened a “rapid response investigation,” as TechCrunch first reported in December.

OSHA has since closed that rapid response investigation without taking any punitive action, according to a TechCrunch public records request. And the lawsuit was recently dropped because his employer, the subcontractor, has workers compensation insurance that prevents it from being sued, according to Cavazos’ attorney.