More than a week has passed since reports first emerged of a “glowing ring of metal” falling from the sky and crashing near a remote village in Kenya.
According to the Kenya Space Agency, the object weighed 1,100 pounds and had a diameter of more than 8 feet (measured after landing on December 30). A few days later, the space agency confidently reported that the object was a piece of space junk. , claiming that it was a ring separated from the rocket. “Such objects are typically designed to burn up upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere or fall into uninhabited areas such as the oceans” – space agency he told The New York Times..
Since these initial reports were published in Western media, a miniature group of specialized space trackers have been using open source data to determine exactly which space object fell in Kenya. They have so far been unable to identify the rocket launch to which the vast ring can be attributed.
Some space researchers believe the object may not have come from space at all.
Did it really come from space?
Space is becoming more and more crowded, but vast pieces of metal from rockets usually do not orbit the Earth undetected and untracked.
“It has been suggested that the ring is space debris, but the evidence is marginal,” he added. he wrote Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. McDowell is highly regarded for his analysis of space objects. “The most likely space-related possibility is the re-entry of the SYLDA adapter from Ariane V184, Object 33155. However, I am not entirely convinced that the ring is space debris at all,” he wrote.
Another prominent space explorer, Marco Langbroek, believes it is likely that the ring came from outer space, so he conducted further research into objects that may have returned around the time of the discovery of the Kenyan object. IN blog post written on Wednesday noted that in addition to the metal ring, other fragments that appeared to be space debris were found a few kilometers from the ring – including material that looked like carbon and insulating foil.
Like McDowell, Langbroek concluded that the object was the most likely source Ariane V launch this took place in July 2008, during which a European rocket launched two satellites into geosynchronous transfer orbit.
The Ariane V rocket was unique in that it was designed with the ability to launch two medium-sized satellites into geostationary orbit, which was much more popular in the overdue 1990s and early 2000s than it is today. To accommodate both satellites, a SYstème de Lancement Double Ariane (SYLDA) shell was placed over the lower satellite, allowing a second satellite to be mounted on it. Langbroek said that at launch in 2008, the SYLDA missile was ejected into a 1.6-degree geosynchronous transfer orbit.
Could it have come from a European rocket?
For years, the object has been tracked by the U.S. military, which maintains a database of space objects so energetic spacecraft can avoid collisions. Due to the lack of tracking stations near the equator, this object is only observed periodically. According to Langbroek, the last observation occurred on December 23, when the spacecraft was in a highly elliptical orbit, reaching perigee just 90 miles (146 km) from Earth. This was a week before the object hit Kenya.
Based on his model of the possible re-entry of the SYLDA missile, Langbroek believes it is possible that a European object could have landed in Kenya around the time its entry was observed.
However, the anonymous account X using the nickname DutchSpace, which, despite its anonymity, has in the past provided reliable information about Ariane launch vehicles, posted a thread indicating that this ring could not have been part of the SYLDA shell. It is clear from the photos and documentation that neither the diameter nor the mass of the SYLDA element corresponds to the ring found in Kenya.
Additionally, Arianespace officials he told Le Parisien daily. on Thursday that they don’t believe space debris is related to the Ariane V rocket. Basically, if the ring doesn’t fit, you have to acquit it.
So what was it?
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.