When some miners encountered a piece of burning space junk in a faraway locale near a town in Western Australia, they alerted local authorities.(Image credit: Western Australia Police Force)
A substantial portion of scorched material that was recently located still aflame in the Australian wilderness is probably from a classified Chinese rocket, according to experts. The blackened remains likely plummeted to earth shortly after failing to entirely incinerate upon its return to the atmosphere.
The smoking wreckage, which spans roughly 5 feet (1.5 meters), was found by local miners around 2 p.m. local time on Saturday (Oct. 18), approximately 18.5 miles (30 kilometers) distant from the town of Newman, within the Pilbara region of Western Australia, ABC News initially stated.
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Marco Langbroek, an aerospace engineering analyst situated at the Delft Technical University in the Netherlands, responsible for tracking orbiting spacecraft trajectories, was first to pinpoint the likely origin of the debris as the upper stage from one of China’s Jielong 3 rockets, which underwent deorbiting not long before its discovery, per Space.com, Live Science’s sister site.
This notion received subsequent support from various experts, including Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer connected to the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who has been observing space debris reentries for over 35 years. The exact time this rocket was initially propelled into space remains undetermined.
Initially, the Australian Space Agency was uncertain about the provenance of the space debris. Later, however, experts verified it was part of the upper stage of a Jielong 3 rocket.
As a result of extensive damage and uncertainty around the spacecraft’s configuration, professionals are unsure precisely which section of the 102-foot-tall (31 m) rocket ended up near Newman. This ambiguity stems from the significant secrecy that surrounds China’s entire space operations, including their rocket blueprints, space plane, lunar initiatives, and satellite constellations.
Nevertheless, it seems predominantly composed of carbon fiber, according to Space.com. The most plausible scenarios, therefore, are that it is either a composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV), which houses high-pressure gases and liquids inside rockets, or the battered remains of the entire upper stage.
Considering its dimensions and landing point, Langbroek also approximates that the surviving fragment of the rocket amounts to a considerable 660 pounds (300 kilograms). This may offer extra evidence that the rocket relies on a trial solid-fuel source, as solid fuel has greater weight than standard liquid rocket propellant, he included.
A striking revelation related to this incident is that the wreckage remained partially ablaze upon discovery, which is highly uncommon. This likely indicates a “very recent impact,” Langbroek mentioned within a blog post.
China has to date initiated eight of its Jielong 3 rockets. This photograph depicts the fifth launch back in January 2025. What goes up is destined to come down
As per NASA, each object dispatched into low Earth orbit, be it a satellite, rocket stage, or more substantial spacecraft like the International Space Station (ISS), will inevitably descend back to Earth upon conclusion of its operational timeframe.
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Typically, these items are entirely consumed upon atmospheric reentry, like China’s Shenzhou-15 spacecraft, which created a stunning “fireball” during its incineration above California back in April 2024. If spacecraft are too extensive to entirely dissolve, they often experience strategic deorbiting so they arrive at a distant zone of the ocean.
However, on occasion, an item anticipated to incinerate fails to fully disintegrate, or a significant spacecraft executes an uncontrolled reentry — as exemplified by the derelict Soviet spacecraft Kosmos 482, which made news while descending to Earth in May. When this transpires, massive remnants of debris may shower the Earth’s surface, potentially yielding disastrous repercussions.
This array of utilized batteries ejected from the ISS during April 2024 did not adequately burn up in Earth’s atmosphere and ended up crashing into a house located in Florida.
China has previously received criticism for the considerable quantity of its rocket boosters which have fallen back to Earth over recent years. The reason for this is because they are noticeably bigger than most other boosters, and because they remain to independently reenter, absent of any guidance by ground operators.
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Although no one has been injured or killed by plummeting space debris thus far, several near misses have occurred. To illustrate, back in January, a metal ring measuring 8-foot-wide (2.5 m) made impact in the middle of a Kenyan village, and back in April 2024, remnants from a battery pallet ejected by the ISS collided with a residence in Florida.
A 2022 study estimated there existed a 10% chance of suffering a space debris-associated accident within the ensuing decade, featuring a heightened likelihood of mortality for individuals residing within the Southern Hemisphere.
Numerous space agencies and private firms are investigating modern methodologies for clearing space junk, but the degree to which new objects are being positioned into orbit is greatly surpassing any advances achieved in removal technologies.
TOPICSChina
Harry BakerSocial Links NavigationSenior Staff Writer
Harry is a U.K.-based senior staff writer at Live Science. He studied marine biology at the University of Exeter before training to become a journalist. He covers a wide range of topics including space exploration, planetary science, space weather, climate change, animal behavior and paleontology. His recent work on the solar maximum won “best space submission” at the 2024 Aerospace Media Awards and was shortlisted in the “top scoop” category at the NCTJ Awards for Excellence in 2023. He also writes Live Science’s weekly Earth from space series.
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