By Hannah Murphy
Police used artificial intelligence to identify a piece of suspected space debris found in outback Western Australia, while space experts believe the object is likely part of a Chinese rocket that launched last year.
Workers at BHP’s Jimblebar mine site, which is about 40 kilometres east of Newman, found the burning object on an access road about 2pm on Saturday and phoned the authorities.
WA Police Superintendent Les Andrews said mine workers initially thought they had come across the wheel of an airplane.
“Through engagement with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, we determined that it wasn’t an actual component, or at least an identifiable component, of a known airplane,” he said.
“A few other suggestions were put forward, which proved incorrect, so I punched a photo into artificial intelligence, and it provided these suggestions – it basically went off from there.”
Andrews said police and other agencies treated the object as if it were HAZMAT material and did a radiation test that turned up negative, before securing it on the mine site.
Space debris found near the mine site.Credit: WA police
Engineers have looked at the photos of the object, but Andrews said they were yet to make a formal identification.
However, the University of Western Australia’s International Space Centre believed it was the fourth stage of a rocket, based off registers kept by different organisations.
“The rocket was launched on September 24, 2024 from a special converted barge … and it carried eight Chinese satellites into Sun Synchronous Orbit,” a spokesperson said.
“Most of them are surveillance satellites.”
Flinders University Associate space archaeology expert professor Alice Gorman agreed with that assessment.
“All indications suggest [the object] is actually the fourth stage of a Chinese rocket that was launched in late September,” she said.
“It seems to be part of the fuel system because these are the components that most commonly survive that re-entry process and fall back to the ground.”
WA Police reiterated there was no threat to the public, but Dr Gorman said there were rules around the handling of space debris.
“If you happen to see a piece of space junk that doesn’t look like it’s decades old, don’t touch it,” she said.
A photograph taken at the scene.Credit: WA police
Dr Gorman said incidents like these could be more commonplace in the future, as more technology companies venture into space exploration.
“These re-entry events are becoming more frequent,” she said
“At the moment, a bit of space junk re-enters the atmosphere every day, but most of the time it’s pretty small. It completely burns up and people don’t even see it.
“What we’re going to see an increase of, is large objects like fuel tanks re-entering at in greater numbers that are more likely to be seen by people – and that greater frequency means they’ll more often fall over land instead of the sea.
“I don’t think people need to be worried about space junk falling on their heads, but it is something that we need to monitor.”
It’s not the first time space debris has notably fallen in Western Australia.
Pieces of the space station Skylab famously plummeted to Earth in WA’s Great Southern in 1979.
According to NASA, the debris created sonic booms and the documented debris footprint stretched nearly 4000 kilometres.
Some parts of the Skylab still sit in the Esperance Museum, while the local shire also, tongue in cheek, fined NASA $400 for littering.
Meanwhile, back in 2023 a large metal cylinder that washed ashore in Jurien Bay was later revealed to be space junk, most likely a stage of an Indian rocket model used in regular launches.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
