If uncertainties remain about the nature of the object that fell from the sky on a village in Kenya at the end of December, such episodes are likely to multiply with the proliferation of space debris.
A metal ring, approximately 2.5 meters in diameter and 500 kg, fell on December 30 in the village of Mukuku, in southern Kenya. The Kenyan Space Agency (KSA) has opened an investigation and initially mentioned a separation ring from a rocket.
But other hypotheses about the object’s provenance quickly emerged. Asked about one of them, a KSA official clarified on Friday that they could not at this stage “remove anyone’s responsibility“.
They are numerous, with some experts interviewed by AFP even doubting that it is an object falling from space. For Romain Lucken, boss of Aldoria, a French startup specializing in satellite monitoring, the hypothesis of debris “is absolutely plausible“. According to him, it would be part of the upper stage of the PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) developed by the Indian Space Agency.
“There is a mission which was sent on December 30 with a re-entry date which corresponds well and above all a re-entry point which corresponds very well, within a few tens of kilometers“, he explains to AFP. Aldoria, which has 15 telescopes around the world, seeks information on launches and then reconstructs the trajectory by knowing “typical trajectories at each of the main launch sites“.
“I’m not even totally convinced that the ring is space debris.“, argues Jonathan McDowell, American expert in astronomy who helped identify a piece of the International Space Station that fell on a house in Florida in April 2024. He studied several hypotheses, including that of the atmospheric re-entry of a part of the Ariane V184 rocket, in 2008, while noting that the mass did not correspond.
“This part does not belong to an element of a European launcher operated by Arianespace“, reacted the French group questioned by AFP on this hypothesis. John Crassidis, professor at New York University SUNY who works with NASA on space debris, judges for his part that the agency’s technical evaluations Kenyanare 100% accurate“and that they will succeed”to determine which country this comes from because each country does things a little differently“.
“This could be a ring not from the rocket itself, but from the upper stage, which tends to be smaller“, he told AFP. According to Christophe Bonnal, French specialist in space pollution, the object could come from a military launcher. “They are armored, this would corroborate the fact that it is very massive and heavy“, he said. But it could also come from an excavator or a tank, he added.
These episodes have not yet caused any deaths, but they are becoming more and more frequent with the multiplication of launches. “Ten years ago, an object capable of creating impact fragments re-entered the atmosphere approximately every two weeks, now this can happen twice a week“, underlines Stijn Lemmens, debris specialist at the European Space Agency (ESA).
“This will end up falling on critical infrastructure like a nuclear power plant or an oil tanker, on homes“, avertit Romain Lucken.”This is our sword of Damocles“, adds Christophe Bonnal. But geography helps, he adds, since the Earth is 71% covered by oceans and 10% by deserts and there is no “only 3.3% of the earth’s surface is densely populated“.
There are some 30,000 cataloged pieces of space debris larger than 10 centimeters and more than a million larger than 1 centimeter and they are all potentially “dangerous“, said Romain Lucken.”The catalog does not include different military objects. If it’s a piece of an American missile, we may never know“, also notes Christophe Bonnal.
John Crassidis mentions Russia and China which do not respect, according to him, “no rules” in this area. In Europe, regulations require operators to put in place measures to “either make controlled reentries into uninhabited areas in the South Pacific, or ensure that the objects will be completely destroyed“, souligne Romain Lucken.
“But that’s the theory. Once the mission is launched, anything can happen. And no one is going to condemn them to pay compensation if there is an accident“, he concludes.
France
Tech
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