NAIROBI: Kenyan officials said Wednesday they were investigating fragments of metal, believed to be from a rocket, that crashed into a village in the

NAIROBI: Kenyan officials said Wednesday they were investigating fragments of metal, believed to be from a rocket, that crashed into a village in the country’s south.

The issue of space trash has risen in tandem with increased spatial traffic.

Kenya Space Agency (KSA) said the object, a metallic ring roughly 2.5 metres (8 feet) in diametre and weighing some 500 kilogrammes (1,100 pounds), crashed into Mukuku village, in Makueni county, on December 30 at around 3:00 pm local time (1200 GMT).

The KSA, working alongside other agencies and local authorities, “secured the area and retrieved the debris, which is now under the Agency’s custody for further investigation.”

  • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    6 days ago

    I’m not sure what launch vehicles this could have conceivably come from - there’s not a lot of 2.5 meter rockets. Maybe it was a payload adapter?

    • unexposedhazard
      2·
      6 days ago

      SpaceX is known to drop shit all over the place, but yeah no idea if they have something like that. Could also just be from a plane.

      • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        6 days ago

        As bad as SpaceX may be, the Chinese have been terrifyingly incompetent at avoiding space debris falling on people. Still, I don’t know if any of their rockets have a diameter like this.

        Certainly could be from non-space activities, like you said.