Is it a bomb? Is it a plane crash? No, it’s space junk

Kenyans who were startled by a terrible rumbling sound followed by a loud boom were relaxing with family and friends on a recent evening.

“It sounded like a bomb, I was shocked. I started looking around, wondering if it was gunshots,” Stephen Mangoka, a 75-year-old farmer from Mukuku village in Makueni County, told the BBC.

“I looked up at the sky to see if there was smoke. Nothing.

“I went to the road to check if there was an accident. Besides, nothing. Then someone told me something fell from the sky.”

In fact, a huge round metal object had fallen from above on farmland next to a dry riverbed, and it was hot.

“We found a large piece of metal that was very red, so we had to wait for it to cool before anyone approached it,” said Ann Kanuna, who owns the land where the object fell.

The giant ring took about two hours to cool and turn gray, but it had already become a sensation with the people who came to look at it.

For the rest of that Monday evening – when few people were working like on New Year’s Eve – crowds flocked to see the huge metal ring.

It was like selfie central, people coming to pose next to it and big discussions about what could have been.

Local authorities in Makueni County – 115 km (70 miles) southeast of the capital Nairobi – were notified.

The Kenya Space Agency (KSA) heard about it and made arrangements to investigate the next day.

But such was the object’s popularity that the inhabitants of Mukuku feared it would be stolen overnight.

Along with the local officers, some took turns standing guard, lighting a fire around them. They wanted to keep away potential scrap dealers and others who wanted to make money out of curiosity.

It is said to weigh more than 500 kg (1,102 lb) – the same as a full-grown horse – and is about 2.5 m (8 ft) in diameter, roughly the size of a child’s four-seater hat.

With daylight more spectators came on New Year’s Eve, followed by the KSA team and the media.

Mukuku had never seen such activity before. When the KSA moved the object that day, the buzzing townspeople stopped worrying about what they had between them.

KSA said its preliminary assessments indicated the object was a “separation ring” from a space launch rocket.

“Such objects are typically designed to burn up as they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere or fall into unoccupied areas such as the oceans,” his statement said the following day.

No one was injured in the fall, but some people in Mukuku began to complain because the impact of the accident caused damage to nearby houses.

Christine Kionga, who lives a kilometer away from the accident site, showed us cracks in the concrete of some of the buildings in her house. He said they appeared after the accident.

Other residents reported that the structural integrity of their homes was also damaged, allegations that have yet to be proven.

“The government must find the owners of this object, and they must receive compensation,” Mukuku resident Benson Mutuku told the BBC.

Local media reported that some residents had begun to feel unwell due to the metal ring, but there was no confirmation from those we spoke to when we visited, nor from the authorities or the KSA.

However, Mr Mutuku said there were concerns about the long-term effects of possible radiation from space.

“This is a space object and we have heard in other similar incidents that the effects of the radiation will affect future generations and there is that fear in this community.”

However, later tests by the Kenya Nuclear Regulatory Authority revealed that although the metal ring had higher levels of radiation than the area where it was found, it was not harmful to humans.

Engineers at the KSA, an East African nation created in 2017 to promote, coordinate and regulate space-related activities, continue to conduct other tests to learn more about the object.

The CEO of KSA said that it was lucky that the object was not seriously damaged when it hit the Earth.

“The ultimate responsibility for any damage or injury caused by that space object rests with the state whose operator may have launched the object,” Brigadier Hillary Kipkosgey told the BBC.

According to the Outer Space Treaty, which is overseen by the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, “states shall be responsible for damage caused by objects in their space”.

“(The ring) is a common element in many rockets and space objects, so it’s difficult to attribute it to a particular rocket or space object, but we have clues, but as I said our investigations are inconclusive,” Brigadier Kipkosgey said.

The BBC showed pictures of the object to the UK Space Agency to get their experts’ thoughts.

“The most plausible object is the separation ring from the upper stage of an Ariane rocket in 2008,” said its launch manager Matt Archer.

“The satellites are fine, but the actual rocket body has gone through and deorbited.”

Ariane was Europe’s primary rocket launch vehicle, helping to orbit more than 230 satellites before being retired in 2023.

It appears that the separation ring may have been orbiting Earth for 16 years before making its unexpected appearance at Mukuku.

This is not the first incident of space junk to appear in East Africa.

A little over a year and a half ago, some suspected space debris fell in several towns in western Uganda.

And a few days ago, on January 8, there were unconfirmed reports of what was believed to be space debris burning brightly in the skies over northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia.

As the space industry grows, such incidents are expected to become more frequent, and African governments may invest in ways to better detect this space-velocity junk.

NASA estimates that there are currently more than 6,000 tons of space debris in orbit.

There are various estimates of the chances of this junk hitting someone, but most are in the one in 10,000 range.

Such statistics are of little comfort to the residents of Mukuku, who can’t help but think of the damage the ring could have caused if it landed in the middle of town instead of on farmland.

“We need a guarantee from the government that it will not happen again,” said Mr Mutuku.