Mick Miners was herding sheep on a four-wheeler last week when he tripped over a pointed black object that looked more than 9 feet tall. It reminded him of either a burned tree or a piece of farm machinery.
“Pretty scary actually,” Miners, 48, said by phone Thursday from his 5,000-acre property in a remote corner of southeastern Australia.
“I was quite surprised,” he added. “You don’t see that every day on a sheep farm.”
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Miners took a picture and sent it to a neighboring farmer, Jock Wallace, who had accidentally spotted a similarly mysterious object on his farm a few days earlier.
It was space junk.
The US space agency NASA said in a statement that SpaceX has confirmed that the object is likely the remaining part of the jettisoned fuselage segment of a Dragon spacecraft used during the Crew-1 mission’s return from the International Space Station in May last year became. “If you think you have identified a piece of debris, please do not attempt to handle or recover the debris,” NASA said.
Space junk refers to devices in space that no longer work. Most space debris burns up on re-entry into the atmosphere, and much of what’s left often falls into the sea. However, as more spacecraft enter orbit — such as those from private companies like SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk — land impacts may occur more frequently. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said it’s not uncommon for space debris to be found on land after an uncontrolled reentry.
“It was a bit surprising to me that so much of the trunk survived the heating process of reentry,” McDowell said, but added that there was no indication the trunk featured anything particularly risky. He said that in the new commercial era of space exploration, it has been much more difficult to get technical information from private companies to assess risks. With more information, “we might be able to better assess, ‘Are we really unlucky, or should we expect that from all the tribe reentry when it happens overland?'”
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The fuselage segment, which is used to carry cargo and also contains the spacecraft’s solar arrays and emitters, is ejected from the body of the capsule shortly after combustion is complete as it de-orbits. “It normally burns in the atmosphere over the open ocean and poses minimal risk to public safety,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
Last week, after debris from a large Chinese rocket re-entered Earth’s atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson issued a rebuke, saying that China “did not share specific trajectory information when their Long March 5B rocket fell back to earth.” He added that all countries “should share this type of information in advance to enable reliable predictions about the potential risk of debris impact, particularly for heavy-duty vehicles like the Long March 5B, which pose a significant risk of loss of life and property”.
The possibility that debris from the rocket could have hit a populated area caused people around the world to track its trajectory for days. This was the third flight of Long March 5B, China’s largest rocket, to perform a so-called “runaway re-entry” to Earth.
Last year, a malfunction caused a SpaceX rocket stage to perform an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere near Seattle in what appeared to be bright objects lighting up the night sky. Parts of the burning rocket debris landed on the property of a farmer in Washington state. The debris had reentered the atmosphere after 22 days in orbit.
The rural area of Australia where miners discovered the space junk on July 25 is about 100 miles south of the capital, Canberra.
Ron Lane, who owns a restaurant in the town of Dalgety, said most people in the area — with the exception of himself — aren’t particularly concerned about the possibility of extra space debris landing on them or their homes.
“If there are three that we know about, there might be another 10 that we don’t know about,” Lane said over the phone from his Tuscany In Dalgety restaurant.
Miners who were born on the farm where he discovered the unidentified debris said his neighbor Wallace called authorities to report the other debris he found on his own property in early July. Public interest grew, Miners said, after Wallace called Australia’s national broadcaster, which later reported on the farmers’ discoveries and said three pieces of debris had been found.
“Then everyone found out, and I had about 300 calls,” said Miners, who has about 5,500 sheep, 100 cattle and 30 horses on his farm in Numbla Vale District.
His own piece of debris is almost 10 feet high and 1.3 feet across, he said, and an Australian Space Agency official called Thursday to say their experts are planning to visit his property next week to “look at it.” to watch”.
The miners said he’s enjoyed learning the preliminary details of how the debris landed so far and he wasn’t sure what would happen next.
He said he would “love to keep it” but was also interested in “some compensation” if the space agencies or companies wanted it back.
Sa’id Mosteshar, professor of international space law and director of the London Institute of Space Policy and Law, said a person could only claim compensation if the debris caused damage to his or her property.
“My guess is they want it back,” Miners added. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it. Like I said, I’m a sheep farmer.”
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