A few miners in Western Australia were driving through the Pilbara when they spotted something burning in the sand. It wasn’t a campfire. It wasn’t a car. Just a blackened chunk of metal that looked like it had literally fallen straight out of the sky.

Police cordoned off the area and called in the Australian Space Agency to investigate. Their early theory is a simple one. It’s space junk. Specifically, a carbon fiber fragment from a rocket, maybe even part of a Chinese Jieling launch that left Earth in September.

Space archaeologist Dr. Alice Gorman told The Guardian that it could be the rocket’s fourth stage, which would make it one of the few pieces of modern space debris lucky enough to survive reentry. Most of it burns up before it ever gets close. Whatever this object is, the Austr

See Full Page