Farmer Finds Space Junk
Kansas Farmer Stumbles Across Russian-Made Rubble
The Associated Press
L A C R O S S E, Kan., Oct. 25 — Locals report mysterious
sightings, streaks of bright lights and plumes of
smoke zooming through sky.
A central Kansas farmer finds flattened and charred
chunks of debris.
This isn’t science fiction.
Chunks From Russia
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the
show on Friday, Oct. 13, was the fourth stage of a Russian
proton rocket launched that day from Kazakhstan, Russia.
And Doug Wereb, an adjunct faculty member at Butler
and Cowley County community colleges, says Rush County
farmer Craig Rixon found fragments of the Russian rocket.
Goddard Space Flight Center’s Networks and Mission
Services confirmed the launch and decay of the satellite late
Tuesday.
Wereb, who is a former space science educator at the
Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center in Hutchinson, was
called on to identify the space junk.
Looked Out of Place
Rixon said he saw the pieces in the sky, but didn’t have any
idea where they fell until days later.
“I was out fixing fence and stumbled across it,” he said.
“It was in a place you couldn’t drive with the pickup.”
Rixon said the charred fragments caught his attention
because they looked so unusual.
“It didn’t look like it should be there,” he said. “I thought
it might have been part of what flew over. That was the first
thing that crossed my mind.”
Rixon called Rush County Sheriff Jack Mendenhall, who
had seen the sky light up while at a high school football
game in La Crosse.
“Everybody in the stadium saw it,” Mendenhall said of the
phenomenon that lit up the sky. “Pieces of it flared off to the
sides like a Roman candle.”
Mendenhall thought it was an aircraft dropping flares, but
as it passed overhead, he saw a big smoke trail.
“I had no idea what it was,” he said. “What convinced me
that it was something burning up was the smoke trail. You
could see it burning, and it was bright.”
Call the Professor
After Mendenhall got Rixon’s call, he shipped the sample to
Wereb, who has identified many meteorites, and astronomy
teacher Rob Kuhn, director of the McConnell Air Force Base
branch of Butler County Community College.
Wereb said the largest piece recovered was about a
foot-and-a-half long and 8 inches wide. A second piece was
10 inches long and about 6 inches wide. Numerous small
fragments were scattered on the ground.
Wereb identified the space junk by its appearance and
odor.
“It looks like a burnt-up rocket casing, it smells like a
burnt-up casing, and it was found where one came down,”
he said.
But, Wereb said, the pieces found in Rush County are just
a small part of the 10- by 14-foot rocket. Most of it burned
up in the sky, Wereb said.
Alan Pickup, with the United Kingdom’s Royal Observatory
in Edinburgh, Scotland, said the rocket casing originally
measured 11 feet in diameter and 13 feet long, and it
weighed about 1,760 pounds. The observatory is renowned
for tracking satellites. |
