Two farmers found space debris on their properties in the Snowy Mountains, in southeastern Australia, on July 9.

A visit by technical experts from the Australian Space Agency (ASA) on July 30 confirmed that they were fragments of SpaceX's space cargo ship, Crew Dragon.

It had made its very first manned flight in November 2020, reports

The Guardian

.

I just got back from Dalgety, NSW.

I was busy confirming that parts of a @SpaceX Crew-1 Trunk capsule crashed into a few paddocks in rural NSW!

More info to come:https://t.co/2VJzeYMhhn pic.twitter.com/sQsE4WAxRq

— Brad Tucker (@btucker22) July 29, 2022

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Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist from the Australian National University, had already told the agency a few days earlier that the fall of this debris coincided with the return to the atmosphere of this SpaceX vessel.

He then went there to identify these impressive objects by their size.

"It's almost like an obelisk from outer space," he commented.

The serial number inscribed on one of these parts facilitated their identification.

SpaceX's expected reaction

Observers are now wondering about the response of Elon Musk's company, which has not yet officially reacted.

According to Brad Tucker, discussions will soon take place to find out if SpaceX will come and recover the ship pieces.

Other objects from this launch could soon fall back to Earth, also generating a lot of questions.

"If it had landed on your house, it would have done a lot of damage," said one of the two Australian farmers.

However, the risk of space debris injuring or killing humans remains very low.

A study published on July 11 in Nature Astronomy has calculated that there is between 6 and 10% chance that a human will die from the fall of space debris in the next ten years.

However, their accumulation in Earth's orbit greatly increases the risk of collisions with space stations and satellites.

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  • Science

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