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The farmer, who discovered the giant piece of charred metal, is now planning to sell it and earn money for building a hockey rink in his hometown
In another incident of falling space junk from the sky, a massive metal piece of space debris suddenly fell on a farm in Canada and was found by a farmer in Saskatchewan, Canada.
The heavy piece of charred metal, which weighed 40 kilogrammes, was suspected to belong to space debris which belonged to multiple layers of burned composite fibres and webbing, reported CBC.
“But I had no idea. I don’t build spaceships for a living. I farm,” said farmer Barry Sawchuk, while speaking to CBC.
This incident occurred just one month after NASA accepted that a piece of trash fell from the International Space Station (ISS) and crash-landed in the backyard of a home in Florida.
How did experts link space junk to SpaceX’s spacecraft?
As per the local reports, the charred metal was sent to a group of astronomy professors who traced the metal’s journey which matched with a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft’s reentry in February.
On February 7, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft undocked from the ISS and landed over the Pacific Ocean. After a splashdown off the coast of Daytona, Florida, a crew of astronauts had returned to Earth from the spacecraft.
The spacecraft was made using an expendable trunk module and reusable crew capsule which is jettisoned prior to reentry of Dragon through Earth’s atmosphere.
As per experts, the trunk module which was discarded before the reentry of the Axiom-3 mission crew in February may have landed on the Canadian farm.
Watch: Robot astronaut heading to Chinese space station
This is not the first time a suspected SpaceX debris landed in a populated place. Another charred piece of metal had fallen on a farmland in Australia in July 2022 and the experts had suspected that it came from SpaceX’s Dragon trunk module.
Amid the growing space industry, the risk of getting hit by a falling piece of spacecraft has increased.
However, Canadian farmer Sawchuk is not very much concerned about the growing threat.
He is planning to sell the piece of space junk and donate some of the profit to building a hockey rink in Saskatchewan, Sawchuk, as per the CBC.
(With inputs from agencies)