500kg glowing red object falls from the sky in Kenya

(CLO) The Kenya Space Agency (KSA) reported that on December 30, a metal circle about 2.5 meters in diameter, weighing about 500 kg and in a "glowing red" state fell on Mukuku village, in Makueni district - southern part of the country.

Investigators believe the object was space debris, possibly the remains of a downed rocket, which reportedly hit the village at around 3pm local time. The KSA “secured the area and recovered the debris, which is currently being held by the agency for further investigation”.

The incident caused no injuries but left locals terrified, fearing a bomb or worse. For residents of Makueni County, southeast of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, the space debris crash was a shock on a quiet Monday afternoon.

Huge metal object falls from the sky in Kenya. Photo: KSA

“I was tending my cows and heard a loud bang,” Joseph Mutua, a local resident, told Kenya’s NTV news channel. “I looked around; I didn’t see any smoke in the cloud. I walked along the roadside to check if there was a car accident, but there was no collision.”

Then Mr. Mutua and his neighbors looked up and saw a large, round object slowly falling from the sky. Some residents said it looked like a giant car steering wheel and glowed red as it fell. According to television news footage, it cooled to a gray color after it landed in a dense undergrowth, flattening trees and bushes.

“If that object had fallen on a farm, it would have been catastrophic,” Mr Mutua said. “We don’t know if it was a bomb or something like that and it fell here.”

“We want the owner of this land to be compensated,” Paul Musili, another resident, told news stations. “We have been losing sleep since the object fell. Everyone is wondering what is going on.”

An initial review by Inside Outer Space of the Aerospace Corporation's Center for Orbital Debris and Reentry Studies (CORDS) Reentry Database suggests a possible connection to the rocket body from the 2004 Atlas Centaur launch. Specifically, the Atlas Centaur launched from Cape Canaveral Space Station on August 31, 2004 carrying the USA-179 military satellite.

Video of the incident (YouTube source: DRM)

X [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qbLkCtbBec[/embed]

According to NASA's Space Science Archive, USA-179 was a US military satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). However, McDowell, which tracks reentry, said US Space Force data showed the rocket stage re-entered the atmosphere over Lake Baikal in Russia.

Space is getting crowded. Last year, the European Space Agency estimated there was more than 14,000 tons of material in low Earth orbit. About a third of it was junk.

With about 110 new launches each year and at least 10 satellites or other objects breaking into smaller pieces each year, that number is set to rise, the space agency says. Many of these objects are falling back to Earth, not breaking up on re-entry as expected.

Last March, a nearly 2-pound piece of debris from the International Space Station (ISS) tore a hole in the roof of a Florida home. A month later, several large pieces of metal from a SpaceX capsule were found on a farm in Canada. A similar piece of metal, estimated to weigh about 100 pounds, was discovered in May at a campsite in North Carolina.

Hoang Hai (according to KSA, NTV, NYT, Space)

Source: https://www.congluan.vn/vat-the-do-ruc-nang-500-kg-roi-tu-tren-troi-xuong-kenya-post328789.html