Officials confirm Elon Musk SpaceX rocket debris crashed in a field

Officials have confirmed that debris from one of Elon Musk's SpaceX missions have crash landed in a farmers paddock.

4

An Australian sheep farmer was stunned when he found a part of a space mission lying in his field. The object was found in Dalgety, located near Australia's Snowy Mountains, which is about a five-hour drive southwest of Sydney. The farmer described the discovery as "astounding". An Australian Space Agency spokesperson recently confirmed that the debris is from a SpaceX mission, and according to astrophysicist Brad Tucker, the debris is from a trunk jettisoned by the Crew-1 capsule that re-entered Earth in 2021.

The astrophysicist explains that the trunk had split up on re-entry as there were reports of more debris being found scattered in surrounding properties. Since the majority of the planet's surface area is water, most of the space debris that makes it to Earth's surface crash land into the ocean. However, with the space expansion only getting exponentially more real as more companies join in on the race and push to other worlds, debris crashing down into Earth is only going to get frequent.

4

SpaceX's human spaceflight program senior director Benjamin Reed spoke to reporters and acknowledged the event by saying that the company is sending a team out to investigate the debris and that the event is "within the expected analyzed space of what can happen", while simultaneously saying that SpaceX is always looking "for ways to we can improve things".

Furthermore, the Crew Dragon's trunk is the part that connects the capsule to the Falcon 9 rocket while it's ascending. One half of the trunk features a solar array while the other half contains a radiator, and before Dragon re-enters Earth, it jettisons both of these off the capsule.

4

In other space news, NASA recently confirmed the origin of the strange spaghetti-like object that was found by a Mars rover. Additionally, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope recently snapped an image of a Cartwheel Galaxy. Check out both of those stories below.

• Read more: NASA confirms origin for spaghetti-like object found on Mars by rover

• Read more: NASA's Webb peers into the chaos of a deep space 'cartwheel'