Western Australian police have announced the finding of an object on an access road to a mine in the Pilbara region. Their social media post describes the object as burning, and while space junk expert Professor Steven Tingay of Curtin University is cautious, he told IFLScience images certainly make it likely it was on fire when it landed. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

“I’ve never seen this happen before,” Tingay noted, but with the number of space launches increasing exponentially, he fears it could become more common. The risks from the sky might be larger than we thought. “Everyone worries about being hit,” when they think about space junk, Tingay said, “but the chance is tiny.” However, an object that reache

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