Officials informed local media that a big metal ring and sphere that people in rural western India reported falling from the sky over the weekend may be from a Chinese rocket blasted into orbit last year.
The metal ring, which is two to three meters (6.5-10 feet) in diameter and weighs more than 40 kilograms (90 pounds), was discovered late Saturday in a rural field in Maharashtra state, according to district collector Ajay Gulhane.
The sky ignited with the crimson disc, which crashed with a boom on an open plot in the hamlet,” an anonymous woman in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district told The Times of India.
“Fearing an explosion, many rushed to their homes and stayed inside for nearly half an hour.”
Gulhane informed PTI that another item, a huge metal ball with a diameter of half a meter (1.5 feet), had fallen in another hamlet in the area. “It’s been taken away to be examined. We’d dispatched (junior officials) to each town in the district to see whether there were any additional fragments of things strewn about.”
No one was hurt, and no damage to the building was reported.
The arrival of the items was the “closest match” to the re-entry timeframes on Saturday for debris from a Chinese rocket launched in February 2021, according to an official from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), according to the Times.
“When rocket bodies survive atmospheric re-entry, rocket pieces like nozzles, rings, and tanks might collide with the Earth,” another ISRO official told the publication.
The ring was consistent with a fragment of China’s Long March 3B rocket, according to space-observer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
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