A large piece of space debris that crashed in rural India last weekend, experts believe came from a Chinese rocket launched last year.
A metal disk, about 3 meters in diameter and weighing more than 40 kg, was found in a village field in the Indian state of Maharashtra on Saturday (2/4) evening. Fortunately, there were no reports of injuries or building damage in this incident.
"We were preparing for a citizen's event, then the sky seemed to light up with a red metal disc falling onto a piece of open land in the village," said an unnamed resident in Maharashtra's Chandrapur district, quoted by the Daily Mail, Thursday (7/4/2022).
Then, he continued, excited people ran to their homes for fear of the effects of the explosion. They remained in the house for almost half an hour.
Another object, a large metal ball about half a meter in diameter, fell in another village in the district, district collector Ajay Gulhane told reporters.
"The object has been collected for inspection. We have sent staff to every village in the district to find more scattered pieces of the object, if any," he said.
An Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) official said the time for the objects to land had the 'closest match' to the reentry time of the debris from a Chinese rocket launched in February 2021.
"As the rocket body survives re-entering the atmosphere, parts of the rocket such as nozzles, rings and tanks can impact Earth," another ISRO official said.
Astronomer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tweeted that the ring was consistent with a piece of China's Long March 3B rocket.
Objects generate enormous amounts of heat and friction as they enter the atmosphere, which can cause them to catch fire and crumble, but larger objects may not completely disintegrate. The debris can land on the planet's surface and cause damage and loss of life, although the risk is low.
In 2020, debris from another Chinese Long March rocket fell on villages in Ivory Coast, causing building damage but no injuries or deaths.
The latest incident comes a month after a discarded rocket believed to belong to China crashed into the far side of the Moon. This is the first time a piece of space junk has accidentally hit the surface of Earth's natural satellite. The three-tonne space debris is believed to have left a large crater on the Moon's surface on March 4.
Astronomers first thought the space junk belonged to Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket, which was launched in 2015. But later it was discovered that the debris came from a Chinese rocket.