A 1,100-pound metal ring, believed to be from a rocket, crashed into a village in Kenya, startling residents. While the Kenya Space Agency (KSA) confirmed the debris poses no further threat, locals are concerned about the potential for catastrophic damage had it landed differently.
A massive piece of space junk recently smashed into a village in Kenya . The 1,100-pound ring of metal likely came from a rocket, though its exact origins are still unknown, Kenya n officials say.
On Monday , a small Kenyan village learned this the hard way when the half-ton metal ring crashed into a thicket, startling locals."I was looking after my cow and I heard a loud bang," Joseph Mutua, a resident of Mukuku village, which lies southeast of the capital Nairobi, told Kenyan news station NTV."I could not see any smoke in the clouds. I went by the roadside to check if there was any car accident, but there wasn't any collision.
While KSA assured people that the ring does not pose any further threat, some locals are still upset. Had the ring landed on a building or home"it would have been catastrophic," Mutua said. Others want to see the owner of the land where the debris crashed compensated for the disturbance, the New York Times reported.
Incidents like this, while still rare, are becoming more common. In May 2024, a piece of debris from a SpaceX craft struck a man's roof in Franklin, North Carolina. A month earlier, two large, scorched pieces of space junk were discovered on a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada. And in March 2024, a hunk of metal from the International Space Station crashed through a family's home in Naples, Florida.
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