Space debris crashes into Kenyan village, believed to be leftover rocket hardware

[Admin]

Kenya Space Agency officials report a large, “red-hot” metallic ring roughly 8 feet (2.5 meters) in diameter fell from the sky, crashing into Mukuku village.

Space debris crashes into Kenyan village, believed to be leftover rocket hardware : Read more

 

[eqnx97]

Just look at the skinny wooden stick holding up a 1,100 pounds metal ring!! This is a cover story!

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Looks like it might be a staging joint.

If it is a rocket component, I would expect somebody to recognize it as their own pretty soon from that photo. But, I guess that doesn't mean they will admit it right away.

I am wondering if it really weighs1,100 pounds. Maybe that "stick" supporting one side is actually an angle iron?

 

[ultimatewizz]

Kenya Space Agency officials report a large, “red-hot” metallic ring roughly 8 feet (2.5 meters) in diameter fell from the sky, crashing into Mukuku village.

Space debris crashes into Kenyan village, believed to be leftover rocket hardware : Read more

Well at least they did not start off with it is from SpaceX and Elon Musk.. Actually blames another company from 2004. But I am sure they will exaggerate and say it could have killed thousands.

 

[Musant]

Kenya Space Agency officials report a large, “red-hot” metallic ring roughly 8 feet (2.5 meters) in diameter fell from the sky, crashing into Mukuku village.

Space debris crashes into Kenyan village, believed to be leftover rocket hardware : Read more

The Russian Angara-A5M is 3.6 meters in diameter. However the Russian Rokot second stage is 2.5 meters in diameter, as is their UR-100N ICBM.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...-ring-crashes-into-kenyan-village/vi-AA1wQVJl

This video shows a lot more detail of the object. It does not appear to be very thick, and I doubt it is made of heavy alloy, so the estimate of 1,100 pounds looks suspect.

 

[Jim Franklin]

There is a lot of misreporting about this. Clearly this hot staging ring came from a launch vehicle that was a recent launch, claims in the media it came from a US launch in Aug 2024 are simply laughable, this object would have had to have been in orbit for all that time and thus undergone a full re-entry - it is a titanium-aluminium alloy apparently, it would not have survived the dive through the atmosphere in the condition it is is, it would have hit the ground at around 11km/s - that would not be survivable in that condition.

The ring clearly came from a lauinch where this ring was sub-orbital, thus it severally limits who suplied it to Kenya. Russia had no launches that had this type of assembly in the previous 9 days, so they are out, the US launches that occurred in the days leading up to this incident 1) do not use HS Rings and 2) the ring could not have, aerodynamically, made it that far around the globe, all such rings from US launches end up in the Atlantic or Pacific.

The Chinese had launches, but they do not use HSRs on those launch vehicles, the only other confirmed launches that are in the right region, aerodynamically are likely to end up in Africa and were launched only 2.5 hours prior to the record of the fall was India, which launched a pair of rockets for polar orbits that are 2.8m in diameter and use hot staging rings.

Further, the design of the ring photographed does not match any design used by American, Russian or Chinese launch vehicles, but is reminiscent of the PSLV launch vehicle they use.

However, this does not mean it is ISIRO in origin, there could be others who had undeclared launches.