Officials from Australia’s space agency announced that a cylindrical piece of space debris found on a remote beach is a rocket part belonging to the Indian government.
“We have concluded the object located on a beach near Jurien Bay in Western Australia is most likely debris from an expended third-stage of a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle,” the Australian Space Agency stated on social media.
The debris was found near Green Head, a coastal town of fewer than 300 people and 155 miles north of Perth, and it is currently being held in storage, the New York Times reported.
The Indian Space Research Organization is expected to come to claim it, according to European Space Agency Engineer Andrea Boyd, CBS News reported.
“There is a United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, and they have an Outer Space Treaty that everyone has signed saying that whoever launches something into space is responsible for it right until the very end,” Boyd said.
The space debris recovered was the size of a small car.
CBS News reported:
Some early media reports suggested the find might be part of MH370, the Malaysian Airlines flight that disappeared in the Indian Ocean in 2014 with the loss of 239 lives. But that theory was quickly discounted.
“It appears to be a possible fuel tank from a rocket that has been launched in the last 12 months that’s dropped into the Indian Ocean,” aviation expert and editor-in-chief of the Airlineratings.com website, Geoffrey Thomas, told the Reuters news agency, adding that there was “no chance” the object was part of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777.
“It’s not any part of a Boeing 777, and the fact is MH370 was lost nine and a half years ago, so it would show a great deal more wear and tear on the debris,” Thomas told Reuters.
NASA said in 2021 that there are 23,000 pieces of debris larger than a softball orbiting the Earth.
This is not the first time the Land Down Under received garbage. Last August, Breitbart News reported that SpaceX debris was found in an Australian sheep paddock.