A farmer sees a dollar sign and a hockey stick in a hunk of space junk that crash-landed in a rape field.
Near the small town of Ituna, Saskatchewan, Canada, Barry Sawchuk and his son were “driving out just to check out the fields to see where they could start sowing” when they found about 88 lb., and a 6.5-foot-wide chunk of charred metal. and fiber.
“At first, we thought it was trash until we got closer,” Sawciak said. CBC. Upon closer inspection, “we immediately said it was space junk, but everyone laughed at it.”
Samantha Lawlor, a professor of astronomy at the University of Regina who studies how planetary orbits evolve over time, traced a trail of debris back to a SpaceX rocket re-entry in February, CBC. reported on Wednesday. SpaceX, the Canadian Space Agency and NASA did not immediately respond. pop scienceis seeking comment on the potential link between debris and private space companies.
[ Related: Yes, a chunk of the space station crashed into a house in Florida ]
Although this discovery is somewhat novel today, space junk such as dead satellites, spent rocket boosters, and jettisoned equipment is rapidly piling up in low Earth orbit. There are 36,500 pieces of debris larger than 10 cm in our orbit. european space agency Estimate.
It was “really lucky” that the object landed on a family farm in rural Canada and not in a populated area, Lawler told CBC. “If that hit Regina right in the middle, [New York City]He could very easily have killed someone,” the professor said. The discovery site is about a three-hour drive north of the North Dakota border.
In March, a small orbiting chunk of debris crashed through the roof of a home in Naples, Florida. That particular chunk came from the International Space Station, NASA announced a month later. NASA said the agency initially expected the hardware, a cargo pallet containing aging batteries, to “completely burn up upon entry into Earth’s atmosphere.” Instead, it crashed through the ceiling and “almost hit my son,” homeowner Alejandro Otero told Florida station WINK News.
[ Related: How harpoons, magnets, and ion blasts could help us clean up space junk ]
“It’s not uncommon for these objects to survive and reach the surface,” Moriba Jha, an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told PopSci in April. Although such objects tend to fall into the ocean, Jha said, “Statistically, [space debris] Someday I’ll kill someone. ”
Sawciak, unharmed and wearing a reflective safety jacket and work boots, offered a tour of what he believed to be the SpaceX object. video interview On top of that.
When he turned the mass over, the webbed fibers crunching, the farmer pointed out the attached cylinder and the webbed layer. “I don’t know if this is insulation. You shouldn’t build spaceships for a living. I’m a farmer,” he added.
Sawczak said he is interested in selling the find and donating some of the money locally.
“Here in Ituna, Saskatchewan, we are currently [hockey] It’s a link,” Sawciak told CBC. “If I can, I’ll sell it and donate a portion of the proceeds to Link.”
It’s unclear whether Mr. Sawciak will face any legal hurdles if he tries to sell the debris. So far, no company or institution has publicly claimed ownership of the debris.
For example, if the object belonged to NASA, the United States would consider it government property. “We can’t afford to try to sell.” [such objects] on eBay,” Nick Johnson, NASA’s former orbital debris chief scientist, told Space Relics.com. collect space In 2021.
In 1999, eBay salvaged what appeared to be “parts of heat shield tiles” from the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. collect space. In 2003, eBay removed its listing for alleged debris from the Columbia shuttle.
While eBay has a history of collecting government space debris, small objects such as heat shield tiles and tile fragments known as SpaceX, Currently occurring in large numbers on auction sites.reportedly sold in the thousands.
