It’s been more than a week since reports began to emerge about a “glowing metal ring” that fell from the sky and crashed near a remote village in Kenya.
According to the Kenya Space Agency, the object weighed 1,100 kilograms and was more than 8 meters in diameter when measured after its arrival on December 30. A few days later, the space agency confidently reported that the object was a piece of space debris. , said the ring that separated from the rocket. “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 told the New York Times.
Since those first reports were published in the Western media, a small group of dedicated space explorers have been using open source data to try to identify exactly which space object fell in Kenya. So far, they haven’t been able to identify a rocket launch where the big ring could be revealed.
Now, some space explorers believe that the object may not have come from space at all.
Did It Really Come From Space?
Space is getting denser, but large pieces of metal from rockets usually don’t fly into Earth’s orbit undetected and untracked.
“It has been suggested that the ring is space debris, but the evidence is inconclusive,” 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 object is the re-entry of the SYLDA adapter from the Ariane V184 spacecraft, 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 that it is clear that the ring came from space, so he investigated further what might have returned when the object was found in Kenya. In a blog post written Wednesday, he noted that in addition to the metal ring, other pieces that appear to be associated with space debris—including what appears to be carbon dioxide and an isolation layer—have been found several kilometers away from the ring.
Like McDowell, Langbroek concluded that the most likely source of the object was the Ariane V launch that took place back in July 2008, when a European rocket lifted two satellites into geosynchronous transfer orbit.
The Ariane V rocket was a unique rocket in that it was designed to launch two medium-sized satellites into geostationary transfer orbit, a space far more popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s than it is today. To accommodate both satellites, the SYstème de Lancement Double Ariane (SYLDA) shell is placed over the lower satellite to support the mounting of the second satellite on top of it. When it was launched in 2008, the SYLDA rocket was launched into a 1.6-degree inclined geosynchronous transfer orbit, Langbroek said.
Could It Come From A European Rocket?
Over the years, the 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 occasionally. According to Langbroek, its last sighting took place on December 23, when it was in an elliptical orbit, reaching a distance of 90 kilometers (146 km) from Earth. This was a week before something crashed in Kenya.
Based on his modeling of the possible re-entry of the SYLDA shell, Langbroek believes it is possible that a European element could have lived in Kenya at the time of its entry.
However, an anonymous X account using the handle DutchSpace, which despite being anonymous has provided reliable information about Ariane launch vehicles in the past, posted a thread showing that this ring could not be part of the SYLDA shell. From the pictures and documents, it seems clear that the size or the size of the SYLDA part is not the same as the ring found in Kenya.
In addition, Arianespace officials told Le Parisien newspaper on Thursday that they do not believe that space debris is associated with the Ariane V rocket. In fact, if the ring does not fit, you should release it.
What was it then?
This story appeared first Ars Technica.