No one was hurt by the object, believed to be part of a launch rocket. Experts say the frequency of such incidents is increasing as the amount of debris in orbit around the Earth grows dramatically.
A glowing ring of metal, more than eight feet in diameter and weighing more than 1,100 pounds, fell from the sky and crash landed in a remote village in Kenya this week, causing no injuries but frightening residents who feared a bomb or worse.
The object turned out to be space debris — junk left over from six decades of space exploration and a growing number of commercial launches, the Kenya Space Agency said Wednesday. It identified the object as a separation ring from a launch rocket and said that it was investigating the ring’s origin and ownership.
“Such objects are usually designed to burn up as they re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere or to fall over unoccupied areas, such as the oceans,” the space agency said, describing the incident as “an isolated case.”
For residents of Makueni County, southeast of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, the space junk’s landing was quite a shock on an otherwise quiet Monday afternoon.
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“I was looking after my cow and I heard a loud bang,” Joseph Mutua, a local resident, told Kenya’s NTV news channel. “I looked around; I could not see any smoke in the clouds. I went by the roadside to check if there was any car accident, but there wasn’t any collision.”