On the afternoon of 14 October, a farmer in Scott Township, Stevens County, western Minnesota, was walking through his cornfield when he stumbled upon something that did not belong there. The metal was charred and round, about 11 feet across. He couldn’t say what it was, so he dialled the sheriff’s office. The deputies who went out to look agreed: it was unusual. It looked like the premise of Steven Spielberg’s latest UFO blockbuster flick. All they knew was that it was not farm equipment.
What is the mysterious object?
In a press release from the sheriff’s office, officials described it as “a large metallic object”. They said the object was “presumably a space object”. State and federal agencies were called in to investigate the debris and help remove it from the property. “Agency officials have determined that there is no danger to the public due to this incident,” the sheriff’s office assured the public. But the pressing questions remained: what was the object, and where did it come from?
The object may have lain in the field for about six weeks, through the growing season and into harvest, local outlets, including the Rapid City Post and NBC affiliates KARE 11 and 9News, reported. Either way, no one knew it was there until the farmer found it. Scott Township is home to about 117 people, which helps explain how something of this size could go unnoticed.
This information has led some experts to suspect that the debris may have come from a rocket. The metal matches the upper stage of a Zhuque-2E, a rocket built by the Chinese company LandSpace. It lifted off on 15 September from north-western China with 10 satellites for the Qianfan network, a project intended to rival SpaceX’s Starlink.
That same night, people in Kansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin filmed fireballs crossing the sky. Ars Technica has linked those videos to the rocket.
The measurements are the strongest clue. The upper stage is about 3.35 metres across, close to the 11 feet reported in the field. Some reports suggest that the metal could be the end cap of a fuel tank. That is a useful description, but it is not yet a confirmed identification.
Under the 1972 Space Liability Convention, the country that launches a space object is liable for any damage it causes on Earth.
This incident is not the first of its kind. Over the years, similar debris has turned up in other places. In July, metal spheres washed ashore in Australia and were traced to a launch vehicle. In Indonesia, a large metal object found in a palm oil plantation is also being investigated as a possible Zhuque-2E fragment. Reports say the same rocket’s upper stage broke apart in orbit during an earlier flight in June.
Meanwhile, official confirmation of the identity of this unusual metallic object found on a Minnesota farm is still pending. The sheriff’s office says investigators are working to determine the object’s origin.