A few miners in Western Australia were driving through the Pilbara when they spotted something burning in the sand. It wasn’t a campfire. It wasn’t a car. Just a blackened chunk of metal that looked like it had literally fallen straight out of the sky.
Police cordoned off the area and called in the Australian Space Agency to investigate. Their early theory is a simple one. It’s space junk. Specifically, a carbon fiber fragment from a rocket, maybe even part of a Chinese Jieling launch that left Earth in September.
Space archaeologist Dr. Alice Gorman told The Guardian that it could be the rocket’s fourth stage, which would make it one of the few pieces of modern space debris lucky enough to survive reentry. Most of it burns up before it ever gets close. Whatever this object is, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau has already ruled out anything aviation-related, meaning it didn’t fall off a passing plane.
Mysterious Object Found in Desert Very Likely Fell From Space
Police described the object as consistent with composite-overwrapped pressure vessels, the kind of high-strength tanks used to store pressurized gases on spacecraft. They’re built to endure, which is why one could survive being launched, frozen, scorched, and then dragged back down through the atmosphere.
Space debris washing up in Australia has happened before, but it still feels like something that belongs in a movie. In 2023, part of a spacecraft landed on a beach in Western Australia. In 2022, farmers in New South Wales found blackened panels from a SpaceX mission scattered across their property. Australia’s vast empty landscapes make it a convenient landing pad for whatever falls from space.
Police are warning locals not to touch the latest find, which might contain hazardous materials or residual fuel. “The object has been secured, and there is no current threat to public safety,” police said in a statement.
For now, the object sits under a temporary shelter while investigators figure out what the heck exactly fell from the sky. After that, it’ll probably end up in storage, one more artifact of humanity’s habit of leaving fingerprints in orbit and occasionally dropping them back on the planet.
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