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Key Facts about Christmas Island

Aug. 21, 2026

SpaceX has recently towed Starship to waters off Christmas Island after the spacecraft floated in the Indian Ocean for nearly 24 days.

About Christmas Island:

  • It is a special territory of Australia located in the Indian Ocean.
  • The island is the summit of an oceanic mountain whose highest point on the island is Murray Hill.
  • The island has steep cliffs along most of its coast.
  • The main settlement and chief port is at Flying Fish Cove on the northeastern part of the island.
  • Most of the island is covered in tropical rainforest. Much of the island (63%) is a national park.
  • One of the island’s best-known animal residents is the Christmas Island red crab (Gecarcoidea natalis), whose spectacular annual emergence and migration draws large numbers of tourists.
  • The reefs around Christmas Island have healthy coral. They are home to several rare marine animals.
    • These reefs, along with those near the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, are sometimes called "Australia's Galapagos Islands".
  • The population includes many ethnic Chinese, a small number of people of European ancestry, and Malay labourers recruited mainly from Malaysia, Singapore, and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.
  • Economy:
    • The economy was completely based on phosphate mining and extraction earlier.
    • With the mineral close to exhaustion now, subsistence cropping, fishing, and tourism serve as the backbone of its economy.

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