Massive piece of space debris falls on remote village in Kenya

globalnews.ca:

A large metallic ring suspected to be debris from space crashed in a village in Kenya’s south on Monday, the country’s space agency said.

A Kenyan Space Agency (KSA) official said the partially burnt metallic object measures about 2.5 metres in diameter, weighs about 500 kilograms and is most likely a fragment from a rocket.

“Such objects are usually designed to burn up as they re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere or to fall over unoccupied areas, such as the oceans,” the space agency shared in a New Year’s Day statement to X, describing the incident as “an isolated case.”

Following the discovery of a metallic fragment of a space object in Mukuku Village, Makueni County, the Kenya Space Agency has issued the following statement. Read more for details on the incident, preliminary findings, and next steps. pic.twitter.com/n8gsvoKku4
— Kenya Space Agency (@SpaceAgencyKE) <a href=«https://twitter.com/SpaceAgencyKE/status/1874322755304173592?ref_src=» https:>January 1, 2025

Residents of the village of Mukuku in Makueni County, southeast of Kenya’s capital Nairobi, described their shock at the debris’s crash landing.

“I was looking after my cow and I heard a loud bang,” Joseph Mutua, a local resident, told Kenya’s NTV news channel, according to a translation from The New York Times. “I looked around; I could not see any smoke in the clouds. I went by the roadside to check if there was any car accident, but there wasn’t any collision.”

“If the object fell on a homestead, it would have been catastrophic,” Mutua continued. “We didn’t know if it was a bomb or whatever it was and it fell here.”

Julius Rotich, Mbooni Sub County police commander, told the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation the object was still hot when officers arrived