IT is the right move to take a breath when it comes to further SpaceX landings in The Bahamas.

This has been quite the week in space travel news for our nation – not the kind of thing we get to write too often.

And after the adulation and celebration of The Bahamas getting its first astronaut in the shape of Aisha Bowe, perhaps it might seem inconsistent to sound a note of caution about the SpaceX booster landings. It is not.

First, the obvious – the mission that gave our nation its history maker was an entirely different company to SpaceX and never troubled our borders.

Second, there is absolutely nothing wrong – indeed, there is everything right – in making sure that we protect our environment and take all the steps needed to do so.

When the first SpaceX booster landing took place in February, it was a remarkable technical feat. However, there were concerns whether the appropriate environmental investigations had taken place beforehand.

An Environmental Baseline Statement (EBS) was carried out but a number of environmental campaigners argued that a more comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) would have given a better picture of the risks involved and the mitigation needed.

Yesterday, the country pumped the brakes on the planned future landings to ensure that very assessment could take place, along with a post-launch report to assess how February’s landing went.

That is pretty much all that campaigners had been pushing for – to make sure that the risks were clearly assessed, and to understand what would be done if anything went wrong.

We have seen what can go wrong – the booster landings are the Falcon 9 rockets, but the Falcon’s big sister, the Starship, exploded and spread debris across our land and waters. These are certainly different vehicles, as the government has been at pains to point out, but it brings a keen awareness of the potential dangers. This is, after all, actual rocket science. The history of space travel has had many incidents, all of which have helped to make things safer, and to raise the bar on what we can do.

If all the steps to report on environmental risks are carried out – and done so in a transparent manner, then we can push the accelerator again.

In addition, further clarity on what the cost of clearing up that other vehicle’s “rapid unscheduled disassembly” have been would again remove some of the lack of clarity that has clouded perceptions on this matter.

The question has often been asked – what does The Bahamas get out of this deal? Making that clear would go a long way to removing concern, and even suspicion, about the planned landings.

What is clear is that The Bahamas may well have a place in the future steps that come, to some extent or another. Getting the footwork right at the outset will make each of those steps easier.