Large Metallic Ring Crashes Into Kenyan Village, Reviving Fears of Falling Space Junk

Scientists are puzzling over the origins of an eight-foot, half-ton metal ring. It landed like a bomb on the village of Mukuku in southern Kenya on December 30. 

The leading theory suggests the ring is fallen space junk . Why? There's a growing dump of garbage circling Earth. The Kenya Space Agency said the item is a rocket separation ring. But other scientists aren’t so sure. No matter where it came from, the ring has sparked fresh concerns. Some are alarmed over the growing threats to life and property posed by falling space debris.  

If the object fell on a home, it would've been tragic, Mukuku resident Joseph Mutua told NTV Kenya. 

The glowing, red-hot ring that fell on the village isn’t a single event. In March, a chunk of a cargo pallet from the International Space Station punched a hole in a Florida home. The people who live there are now suing NASA. The next month, an orbiting capsule of a Chinese spacecraft plunged to Earth. It crashed in a fireball in Southern California. Around the same time, large pieces of a SpaceX craft were found on a farm in Canada. 

“Space is no longer as safe ...,” Kenya’s Space Agency Major Aloyce Were told The New York Times. 

At present, nearly 19,000 trackable pieces of space garbage are floating above Earth, Jonathan McDowell told Reuters. He's a space junk expert. He's also a Harvard astronomer. With the launching of 110 new spacecraft each year and the steady decay of old satellites, scientists expect that number to grow.    

That said, the current odds of a person getting struck by falling space debris are about 1 in 1 trillion.   

Reflect: What do you think would happen if random objects started falling from space more often? 

Photo of metallic ring that landed in southern Kenya from Kenya Space Agency.