A large ring of metal suspected to be space debris crashed into a valley in southern Kenya on Monday, the country’s intelligence agency said.
A Kenyan Space Agency (KSA) official said the burnt metal object was about 2.5 meters in diameter, weighed 500 kilograms and was probably a piece of a rocket.
A piece of space debris, possibly from a rocket, landed in a small area in Kenya.
Handout / Kenyan Space Agency
“Such objects are usually designed to burn up as they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere or fall into uninhabited areas, such as the ocean,” the space agency shared in a New Year’s Day statement to X, describing the incident as “an isolated place. case.”
Residents of Mukuku village in Makueni County, southeast of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, described their shock at the fall of debris.
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“I was tending my cow and I heard a loud noise,” Joseph Mutua, a local resident, told Kenyan news channel NTV, according to the New York Times version. “I looked around; I didn’t see any smoke in the clouds. I went to the side of the road to check if there was a car accident, but there was no collision.”
“If this thing had fallen into a house, it would have been a disaster,” continued Mutua. “We didn’t know if it was a bomb or what it was and it fell here.”
Julius Rotich, Mbooni Sub County police commander, told the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation that the scene was still hot when police arrived on Monday, and that residents were kept away from the area until it cooled down.
Space debris and space junk are a growing problem, and last year the European Space Agency estimated that there were more than 13,000 tonnes of material in low Earth orbit – almost a third of which was identified as space debris.
The agency estimates that with nearly 110 new launches each year, and at least 10 existing satellites and other objects breaking up in space every year, the amount of space debris will grow.
Last year, when a piece of orbital debris was found in rural Saskatchewan, the Canadian Space Agency told Global News that it takes the issue of space debris seriously and is working to ensure it does not pose “significant risks” to Earth. .
Barry Sawchuk found a large piece of suspected space debris, as shown in this photo provided by Sawchuk, in a field on his farm near Ituna, Sask., on Feb. 28, 2024.
Barry Sawchuk / Handout / The Canadian Press
“With the increase in space traffic, space debris is a growing problem, for which we are all working closely with national and international partners to find management solutions,” said Stéphanie Durand, CSA’s vice president of program policy, in a statement. the time.
According to KSA, the debris that fell in Kenya is being investigated under international law.
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