Is it a bomb? Is it a plane crash? No, it’s space junk

A loud noise followed by a thunderbolt startled Kenyan villagers relaxing one afternoon with their family and friends.

“It sounded like a bomb, I was surprised. I started looking around, wondering if it was gunshots,” Stephen Mangoka, a 75-year-old farmer from Makueni village in Makueni district, told the BBC.

“I looked up to see if there was smoke.

“I ran down the street to see if there was an accident. And there was none. That’s when someone told me that something had fallen from the sky.”

Instead, a large spherical object fell from above and landed on a farm near a dry riverbed – and it was very hot.

“We found a big metal that was very red so we had to wait for it to cool down before anyone approached it,” said Ann Kanuna, who told us that the owner of the place where the thing fell.

The giant ring took about two hours to cool down and turn gray – but it was already drawing crowds.

All afternoon on Monday evening – with few people working as it was yesterday on New Year’s Eve – crowds came to see the big metal ring.

It was like a selfie in the middle, with people coming to stand next to it and great arguments about what it could be.

Local authorities in Makueni district – located about 115km (70 miles) southeast of the capital Nairobi – have been notified.

Then the Kenya Space Agency (KSA) heard about the matter and arranged to come and investigate the next day.

But the popularity of the item is such that the people of Mukuku village were afraid that it would be stolen overnight.

Along with local officials, some of them took turns patrolling, setting fires nearby. They wanted to keep out antique dealers and others who wanted to make money out of curiosity.

It is said to weigh more than 500kg (1,102lb) – about the same size as a large horse – and is about 2.5m (8ft) in diameter, about the size of a four-seat merry-go-round.

In the afternoon came many spectators on New Year’s Eve – followed by the KSA team and the media.

Mukuku had never seen such work before. When the object was removed on the same day by the KSA, the noise was filled with concern among the villagers.

The KSA said their preliminary analysis showed the object was a “separation ring” from a space launch rocket.

“Such objects are designed to burn up when they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere or fall into uninhabited areas, such as oceans,” he said the next day.

No one was injured when it fell but some in Mukuku began to complain that the accident damaged nearby houses.

Christine Kionga, who lives one kilometer away from where the accident happened, showed us the cracks in the concrete of some of the buildings in her house. He said he appeared after the accident.

Some neighbors say their homes have also been affected – claims that have yet to be confirmed.

The government needs to find the owner of this thing, and get compensation for those affected by this thing,” Mukuku resident Benson Mutuku told the BBC.

There were reports in the local press that some people began to complain of feeling unwell after coming in contact with the metal ring although there was no confirmation from those we spoke to when we visited them – or from the authorities or the KSA.

Despite this, Mutuku said there are concerns about the long-term effects of space radiation.

“This is an atmospheric phenomenon and we have heard in other similar cases that there have been effects of radiation that affect even future generations and there is that fear in this community.”

However, tests carried out later by the Kenya Nuclear Regulatory Authority showed that although the iron ring had higher levels of radiation than the area where it was found, it was not harmful to people.

Engineers from the KSA, which was established in 2017 to promote, coordinate and manage land-related activities in the East African country, continue to carry out further tests to find out more about the product.

The KSA director general said it was fortunate that no major damage was caused when the object crashed into Earth.

“The most important factor in any damage or injury caused by airspace is the state in which the operator can launch the object,” Brigadier Hillary Kipkosgey told the BBC.

According to the Outer Space Treaty, which is overseen by the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, “states shall be responsible for the destruction of space objects”.

“[The ring] it is a common thing in many rockets and many space objects so it is difficult to say that it came from a rocket or an object in space but we have leads but as I said our investigation is not final,” said Brigadier Kipkosgey.

The BBC showed images of the object to the UK Space Agency to hear the views of its experts.

“The most obvious thing that could happen is the separation ring from the Ariane rocket in 2008,” the launch director, Matt Archer, said.

“The satellites are fine, but the rocket body is over and over.”

The Ariane was Europe’s largest rocket launch vehicle, carrying more than 230 satellites into orbit, before being retired in 2023.

It appears that the separation ring must have been orbiting the Earth for 16 years before it unexpectedly appeared in Mukuku.

This is not the first time that space debris has been seen in East Africa.

About a year and a half ago some debris is suspected to have fallen in several villages in western Uganda.

And a few days ago, on the 8th of January, there were unconfirmed reports of what they believed to be space debris burning in the air over northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia.

As the space industry grows, it is predicted that such incidents will become more frequent – and African governments may need to invest in ways to better detect the speeding debris.

NASA estimates that there are currently 6,000 tons of space debris.

There are different estimates about the probability of it hitting a person, but most are in the 1 in 10,000 category.

Such figures are not encouraging for the residents of Mukuku town, who cannot help but think about the damage the ring would have done if it had landed in the center of the village instead of there.

We need a guarantee from the government that it will not happen again,” said Mutuku.