Carlos Solis
Experts from the Australian Space Agency have suggested this could be a fragment of a Chinese rocket. It landed as space debris in a desolate area near the mining town of Newman.
The piece of metal and carbon fiber kept burning after it fell. Alice Gorman, a space archaeology expert and associate professor at Flinders University, said the fragment may be part of the Chinese CZ-5 rocket, which was launched at the end of September.
If so, the fragment may have orbited Earth for some time before re-entering the atmosphere and crashing down, Gorman said.
State police leading the investigation said initial examinations suggested the object, made of carbon fiber, could be a composite high-pressure vessel or a rocket tank used in space technology. They said they’re awaiting technical assessments from engineers at the Australian Space Agency to determine the object’s nature and origin.
Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, who recently visited Australia for the International Astronautical Congress, told The Guardian that space debris is becoming an increasingly serious issue. As launches grow more frequent, debris falling to Earth is becoming more common, the newspaper reported. He also said spacecraft should be designed to break into sufficiently small pieces that burn up in the atmosphere, preventing them from reaching Earth’s surface.
Gorman said anyone launching a rocket should have a plan for what to do when it reaches the end of its service life. She added that debris falls to Earth fairly often, but it’s rare to see a piece still burning when it lands.
