Last summer I sat in my living room and watched a ball of fire land in the back of the forest. Strange things happen when you spend enough time in nature. It’s like you start getting gifts like meteors, the northern lights or the visits from blue herons flying by your window. An Australian couple walking on the beach thought they’d seen a new floating natural phenomenon, but it turns out it’s a new kind of space junk that’s coming back to earth. The Aussies are calling them Space Balls.
We’ve written about the problem of space junk in the past. And while it’s comical, Elon Musk sent his own junk there on purpose, one of his first cars, now orbiting the sun with a mannequin waving. The Tesla was launched in 2018 to serve as a dummy payload for the Falcon Heavy’s first mission, which Musk predicted would have a 50/50 chance of success.
The latest objects washing up on the Australian shore are actually the remains from a space launch vehicle, says Australia’s space agency.
Space archeologist Alice Gorman says “This is a classic example of what is known as ‘space balls’,” and they are pressure vessels that contain rocket fuel. These balls can resist reentry into orbit and are buoyant so they don’t sink. “More rockets means more space junk,” Gorman says, noting that we are going to be seeing more of this.
NASA says that that most of the time these kinds of re-entry space objects burn up on entry. So there is probably no need to wear tin helmets, yet.
