Possible SpaceX debris falling over Australia from the Crew-1 Dragon spacecraft
Space junk from old SpaceX missions may have landed in rural Australia. A piece of charred material reportedly left over from the reentry of the SpaceX spacecraft was found in the middle of a sheep paddock near Dalgety; The discovery followed an “explosion” heard by witnesses July 9 local time in the southeast of the country. SpaceX has yet to confirm whether the pieces were part of its Crew-1 Dragon spacecraft that managed to crash on May 2, 2021. That said, longtime space debris tracker Jonathan McDowell said in twitter (opens in a new tab) Friday (July 29) that Dalgety was actually under the re-entry projection of a piece of unstressed Dragon “stem”, dumped before re-entry. McDowell added that the photos showed that the debris came from one of the trunk fins. These fins are on the circumference of the rocket to aid aerodynamics during the launch phase of the mission. Related: SpaceX’s Crew-1 astronaut mission to the International Space Station in this photo Sheep farmer Mick