On Monday, December 30 at around 3 p.m. local time, a metal object fell from the sky and landed in Mukuku village located in Makueni County, Kenya. On Wednesday, the Kenyan Space Agency confirmed that it is a fragment of a space object.
According to initial assessments by the Kenya Space Agency (KSA), the metal object is a separation ring of a launcher which measures approximately 2.5 m in diameter and weighs almost 500 kg.
« Such objects are generally designed to burn up upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere or to fall onto unoccupied areas, such as the oceans. », Writes the KSA in a press release. “ This is an isolated case which the Agency will investigate and address based on the framework established by international space law. »
Find the guilty rocket
The Kenya Space Agency emphasizes that the space object does not present no threat to public safety. No particular damage appears to have been reported. It was nearby villagers who alerted the authorities.
The Kenyan Space Agency will seek to identify the owner of the rocket ring. A priori, all space debris in the area has been recovered and is now in its custody.
Last March, the fall of a 700 g cylindrical space object measuring 10 cm high and with a diameter of 4 cm damaged a house in Florida. It was debris from a pallet of used batteries from the ISS that had survived atmospheric reentry. A piece of debris at the origin of a lawsuit filed against NASA.
N.B. : Source images : Africanews – YouTube (vignette), Nasa.
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