The piece of metal, believed to have fallen on July 9, was discovered last week in Dalgety, a remote New South Wales village about five hours' drive southwest of Sydney.
"It was both exciting and strange," Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist who visited the site after being contacted in July by local farmers, told AFP.
He said the discovery of this piece buried in an empty field reminded him of the science fiction film "2001: A Space Odyssey".
The Australian space agency confirmed in a press release that this debris came from one of the missions carried out by SpaceX, which belongs to multi-billionaire Elon Musk.
Tucker said the piece of metal is part of a part dropped by the Crew-1 capsule when it re-entered Earth's atmosphere in 2021.
Other space junk has also been found at nearby properties and it's possible it has a connection to SpaceX's mission.
Most space junk falls into the sea, but with increasing activity in space industries around the world, the amount of debris crashing into the earth is expected to increase, he added.
"We must realize that there is a probable risk that it will affect an inhabited area," said the Australian Space Agency, which said it was trying to reduce the number of debris and had raised the problem at the international level.
Benjamin Reed, a SpaceX official, told a press conference that the company is aware of this information and that a "team is on the way to verify it".
"The most important thing, of course, is that there are no injuries or damage," he added, adding that SpaceX was in contact with the US State Department and the Australian Space Agency. .
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"This is one of the things that can happen", even if SpaceX will "always look for ways to improve" these points, said Benjamin Reed.
The Crew-1 crew took off from Florida in November 2020, and returned to Earth in May 2021.
© 2022 AFP