It's been more than a week since reports first emerged of a “glowing metal ring” falling from the sky and landing near a remote village in Kenya.
According to the Kenya Space Agency, the object weighed 1,100 pounds and was more than 8 feet in diameter when measured after it landed on December 30. Days later, the space agency confidently reported that the object was a piece of space debris. , saying it was a ring that separated from the rocket. “Such objects are typically designed to burn up when they reenter Earth's atmosphere or fall into uninhabited areas, such as the ocean,” the space agency said. told the New York Times.
Since those initial reports were published in Western media, a small group of dedicated space watchers have been using open source data to try to pinpoint the space object. Which falls in Kenya. So far, they have not been able to identify the rocket launch that the large circle could have caused.
Now, some space watchers believe that the object may not have come from space at all.
Does it really come from space?
Space is increasingly crowded, but large chunks of metal from rockets often do not orbit the Earth without being detected and tracked.
“It has been suggested that the ring is space debris, but the evidence is scant,” wrote Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. McDowell is highly regarded for his ability to analyze objects in space. “The most likely space-related possibility is the return of the SYLDA transducer from Ariane V184 flight, object 33155. However, I am not entirely convinced that the ring is space debris ,” he wrote.
Another famous space tracker, Marco Langbroek, believed it was plausible that the ring came from space, so he investigated further into objects that might have returned around the time the object was discovered. discovered in Kenya. IN a blog post written on Wednesday he noted that in addition to the metal ring, other pieces of what appeared to be space debris — including material that looked like carbon wrapping and isolation foil — were found several kilometers from the ring.
Like McDowell, Langbroek concluded that the most likely source of this object was Ariane V premiere took place in July 2008, in which a European rocket placed two satellites into geosynchronous transfer orbit.
The Ariane V rocket is quite unique in that it was designed with the ability to launch two medium-sized satellites into geostationary transfer orbit, a much more popular destination in the late 1990s and early 1990s. 2000 compared to today. To accommodate both satellites, a SYstème de Lancement Double Ariane (SYLDA) shell was placed over the lower satellite to aid in mounting the second satellite on top of it. Langbroek said that during the 2008 launch, this SYLDA shell was pushed into a geosynchronous orbit inclined at 1.6 degrees.
Could it have come from a European rocket?
For many years, this 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 only observed periodically. According to Langbroek, its last observation was on December 23, when it was in a highly elliptical orbit, reaching perigee just 90 miles (146 km) above Earth. This was a week before an object fell in Kenya.
Based on his modeling of the likelihood of the SYLDA shell re-entering the atmosphere, Langbroek believes it is likely that the European object landed in Kenya around the time it was observed.
However, an anonymous X account using the name DutchSpace, although anonymous, has provided reliable information about Ariane launch vehicles in the past, posted a topic that suggests this ring cannot be part of the SYLDA case. Given the images and documents, it seems clear that neither the diameter nor the mass of the SYLDA component matches the ring found in Kenya.
Additionally, officials at Arianespace told Le Parisien newspaper on Thursday that they don't believe the space debris is related to the Ariane V rocket. Basically, if the ring doesn't fit then acquittal.
So what is it?
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.