Brennender Weltraumschrott mit einem Gewicht von 500 kg landet in einem kenianischen Dorf

***The Telegraph reports***:

A red-hot piece of space debris that weigh​s half a tonne plummeted to Earth this week, landing in a remote Kenyan village.

The charred metal object was later identified to be the separation ring from a launch rocket that crash landed in Makueni county, south-east of Nairobi. 

Experts have warned that incidents of space junk landing in populated areas without breaking up on re-entry are on the rise as the amount of debris in orbit surges.

Authorities were still investigating the extent of the damage to the village of Mukuku as well as the ring’s origin and ownership​, said Major Aloyce Were of the Kenya Space Agency.

“Space is no longer as safe as we used to know it,” ​he told local television stations.

Major Were added that the piece of glowing space junk, which weighs as much as a grand piano, landed in bushland on Monday and there had been no reports of injuries.

“Such objects are usually designed to burn up as they re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere or to fall over unoccupied areas, such as the oceans,” the agency later said in a statement, calling it an “isolated case”.

A resident, who was not named, told the Kenyan Tuko news site: “‘I heard what I thought was an explosion when it landed here… I asked, ‘Is the world ending today?’”.

“I was shocked because it was so sunny with no hint of rain. I hope our leaders will tell us what this object was and why it fell here,” he added.

“We want the owner of this land to be compensated,” Paul Musili, another resident, told local news. “Since this object fell, we have not been sleeping. Everyone is wondering what is going on.”

The European Space Agency estimated last year that there were more than 14,000 tonnes of material in low Earth orbit.

Roughly a third of that is junk, according to Dr Sara Webb, an astrophysicist at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

“We’ve reached this point in our exploration and use of space where this isn’t just something that happens once in a blue moon, it is now almost every month or two,” she told The New York Times.

In 2023, the US Federal Communications Commission handed out its first ever fine over space debris, forcing television provider Dish Network to pay $150,000 (£121,000).

**Full story:** [**https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/01/03/burning-space-junk-weighing-500kg-lands-kenyan-village/**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/01/03/burning-space-junk-weighing-500kg-lands-kenyan-village/)

Imagine some satellite crashing onto North Sentinel Island.

We’re not long for experiencing the “Kessler syndrome”.

Does it identify where the piece came from, which space agency or vehicle?