It's been over a week since reports first emerged about a “glowing ring of metal” that fell from the sky and crashed near a remote village in Kenya.
The object weighed 1,100 pounds and was more than 8 feet in diameter when measured after landing on Dec. 30, according to the Kenya Space Agency. A few days later, the space agency confidently reported that the object was a piece of space debris. , saying that it was a ring that had been ejected from a rocket. “Such objects are typically designed to burn up when re-entering Earth's atmosphere or fall into empty areas such as oceans,” the space agency said. told the New York Times,
Since those initial reports were published in Western media, a small group of dedicated space trackers has been using open source data to try to identify exactly which space object fell in Kenya. So far, they have not been able to identify the rocket launch to which the large ring can be attributed.
Now, some space trackers believe that the object may not have come from space at all.
Did it really come from space?
Space is becoming increasingly crowded, but large chunks of metal from rockets are generally not flying into Earth's orbit undetected and untracked.
“It was suggested that the ring is space debris, but the evidence is slight,” wrote Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. McDowell is highly respected for his analyzes of space objects. He wrote, “The most likely space-related possibility is the re-entry of the SYLDA adapter from the Ariane V184 flight, Object 33155. Still, I am not entirely convinced that the ring is space debris.”
Another prominent space tracker, Marco Langbroek, believes it is plausible that the ring came from space, so he further examined objects that were returned at the time of the object's discovery in Kenya. In A blog post written on Wednesday They noted that in addition to the metal ring, other pieces consistent with space debris – including carbon wrap and material resembling isolation foil – were found several kilometers away from the ring.
Like McDowell, Langbroek concluded that the most likely source for the object was ariane v launch This occurred in July 2008, in which a European rocket placed two satellites into geosynchronous transfer orbit.
The Ariane V rocket was a unique rocket because it was designed with the capability to launch two medium-sized satellites into geostationary transfer orbit, much higher in the late 1990s and early 2000s than today. Was popular. To accommodate both satellites, a System de Launchement Double Ariane (SYLDA) shell was placed over the lower satellite to support the installation of a second satellite on top of it. During launch in 2008, this SYLDA shell was thrown into a 1.6-degree inclined geosynchronous transfer orbit, Langbroek said.
Could it have come from a European rocket?
For years, this object has been tracked by the US military, which maintains a database of space objects so that active spacecraft can avoid collisions. Due to the lack of tracking stations near the equator, this object is observed only from time to time. According to Langbroek, its last observation was on December 23, when it was in a highly elliptical orbit, reaching a perigee of only 90 miles (146 km) from Earth. This was a week before an object crashed in Kenya.
Based on his modeling of the potential reentry of the SYLDA shell, Langbroek believes it is possible that the European object would have landed in Kenya around the time its entry was observed.
However, an anonymous posted a thread This suggests that this ring could not have been part of the SYLDA shell. From the images and documentation, it appears clear that neither the diameter nor the mass of the SYLDA component matches the ring found in Kenya.
Additionally, Arianespace officials told Le Parisien newspaper Said Thursday that they do not believe the space debris was linked to the Ariane V rocket. Essentially, if the ring doesn't fit, you should be acquitted.
So what was it?
This story was originally published on Ars Technica,