{"id":213147,"date":"2025-10-20T12:50:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T12:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/213147\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T12:50:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T12:50:08","slug":"burning-space-debris-which-crashed-to-earth-may-have-come-from-chinese-rocket-says-expert-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/213147\/","title":{"rendered":"Burning space debris which crashed to Earth may have come from Chinese rocket, says expert | World News"},"content":{"rendered":"

A burning piece of space debris which crashed to Earth in Australia is likely to have come from the launch of a Chinese rocket, an expert has said.<\/p>\n

The chunk of smoking metal was found by mine workers nearly 19 miles east of Newman, Western Australia, on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Police said an investigation had been launched – while the Australian Space Agency will be conducting “further technical analysis to identify its origin”.<\/p>\n

Any connection to commercial aircraft has been “ruled out” and the object has been “secured and poses no threat to public safety”.<\/p>\n

\"Pic:<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Pic: WA Police Force<\/p>\n

Western Australia Police Force added: “Mine workers reported the object near a remote access road.<\/p>\n

“Initial assessments suggest it’s made of carbon fibre and consistent with previously identified space debris, such as composite-overwrapped pressure vessels or rocket tanks.”<\/p>\n

\"Pic:<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Pic: WA Police Force<\/p>\n

Flinders University space archaeologist Alice Gorman said the debris may have come from the fourth stage of a Chinese rocket called Jielong.<\/p>\n

“The last launch was late September, so this has been barrelling around the Earth and quite suddenly has got pulled back to the atmosphere,” she told ABC Radio Perth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Pic:<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Pic: WA Police Force<\/p>\n

Dr Gorman said there are many examples of empty rocket fuel tanks which have returned to the Earth’s surface without burning up.<\/p>\n

“People often find them years later,” she added. “So this one’s a bit unusual because it was found pretty quickly.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Read more from Sky News:
UK military to be given powers to shoot down drones<\/a>
Huge internet outage knocks out multiple websites<\/a> <\/p>\n

In May, a car-sized piece of Soviet rocket crashed back to Earth<\/a> after 53 years in orbit.<\/p>\n

Cosmos 482 was destined to land on Venus after being launched from the USSR’s spaceport in what is now Kazakhstan in 1972.<\/p>\n

Instead, the upper stage of the rocket failed before parts of the rocket re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere in the 1980s, leaving one chunk drifting in orbit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A burning piece of space debris which crashed to Earth in Australia is likely to have come from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-213147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}