“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.
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“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 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 sit in the Esperance Museum, while the local shire also, tongue in cheek, fined NASA $400 for littering.
A large metal cylinder washed ashore in Jurien Bay in 2023 was later revealed to be space junk, most likely a stage of an Indian rocket model used in regular launches.
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