Debris falling from the sky: more often, more risk

metallic ring crashes in Kenya, possibly space debris; experts debate its origin.

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PARIS:

It is still not clear what exactly fell onto a Kenyan village last month, but such events are likely to become increasingly common given the amount of space debris drifting above the planet.

A metallic ring of roughly 2.5 metres (8 feet) in diameter and weighing some 500 kilogrammes (1,100 pounds), crashed into Mukuku village, in Makueni county, in the south of the country on December 30.

The Kenya Space Agency (KSA) has opened an investigation and is examining the possibility that it might have been the separation ring from a rocket.

Other theories have already surfaced however, and a KSA spokesman has said they have not ruled out anything.

It is not even certain that what crashed in Kenya came from outer space.

But for Romain Lucken who runs Aldoria, a French start-up that tracks debris in space, it is "absolutely plausible" that it did.

He said he thought it might be part of the upper stage of a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) developed by India's space agency.

"There is a mission that was sent up on December 30 with a return date that fits well, and most of all, a point of re-entry that fits very well, to within a few dozen kilometres," he told AFP.

Aldoria, which has 15 telescopes around the world, searches for information on launches and then works out flight paths based on "the typical trajectories of each of the main launch sites".

But Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is not convinced.

It was McDowell who identified a piece of the International Space Station (ISS) that crashed down on a house in Florida last April.

"I do not believe this object came from space. Maybe fell off an airplane," he told AFP. "Give me evidence it is space debris."