Mysterious giant metallic ring falls in Kenya
‘Red and hot’ object suspected to be rocket debris
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Villagers discovered the “red and hot” ring suspected to be rocket parts at about 3pm local time on 30 December, the Kenyan Space Agency said, adding that it “secured the area and retrieved the debris“.
“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 agency said in a statement.
“Preliminary assessments indicate that the fallen object is a separation ring from a launch vehicle.”
Rocket debris is designed to burn up during re-entry into the earth's atmosphere or to fall over unoccupied areas such as the oceans.
“There are many pieces of debris in space and one cannot be 100 per cent certain which will fall where,” the agency said. “However, most debris burns up in the atmosphere, and incidents like this are extremely rare.”
“KSA officials rushed to the scene and, working alongside a multi-agency team and local authorities, secured the area and retrieved the debris.
Space junk is a growing problem, and while this may be an isolated case, the threat is real. Some pieces of space junk are as large as cars or even buses, and if they were to fall, they could pose significant risks to property and human life.
Everyone needs to be aware of this and report anything suspicious to the authorities.”
Space observer Jonathan McDowell, who tracks rocket movements, said the Kenyan agency could be “mistaken” about the source of the debris.
He emphasised that it could not have come from a space shuttle’s rocket booster. “Totally impossible. The SRBs never reached orbit and have not been ‘in the sky’ since 2011,” the researcher from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said on social media.
“I’m not convinced it’s not from an airplane. Don’t see obvious evidence of reentry heating,” the astrophysicist told Inside Outer Space.
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