Massive Chunk Of Possible Space Junk Weighing Over 1,000 Lbs Crashes In Kenyan Village
According to the Kenya Space Agency, at around 3 p.m. local time on Monday villagers in Kenya's Mukuku village discovered a red hot metal ring. The agency believes that the part is a man-made space part, perhaps a piece from a rocket. KSA stated that, "the agency wishes to clarify that the object, a metallic ring measuring 2.5 metres in diameter and weighing about 500kg, is a fragment of a space object."
The KSA says it has secured the area and retrieved the debris for further analysis, although the agency's "preliminary assessments indicate that the fallen object is a separation ring from a launch vehicle." Ideally, rocket debris should either burn up upon re-entry into Earth's atmosphere or crash into uninhabited locations, such as oceans or forests. Still, the KSA assures that a fluke incident like this is extremely rare, that "there are many pieces of debris in space and one cannot be 100 percent certain which will fall where."
However, some within the space community have cast their doubts on the source of the debris. Judging from the video and pictures, the ring shows very little evidence of re-entry heating. KSA's claim that the ring originates from space and from a launch vehicle seems unlikely since rocket boosters don't usually reach orbit, thus some experts are convinced that the part could be from an airplane instead.
Regardless of which way this story lands (pun intended), space debris is definitely a growing problem. The number of space junk, including loose debris from spacecraft and decommissioned equipment, is growing at an alarming rate annually. Some of these space pieces are the size of large SUVs or busses with the potential to cause damage or injury (or worse), especially when they fail to completely burn up.
