If you were awake and looking up at the sky on Wednesday at around 3:30 am in Northern Europe, you saw quite a sight. Around that time, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket made an uncontrolled reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, and fiery debris was spotted in the sky by residents of Denmark, Sweden, and England, the BBC reports. But it was Poland that saw the aftermath of the disaster up close, as what is believed to be rocket parts fell across the country.
Perhaps the most remarkable part of the disaster was the tank, which was spotted by Adam Borucki, a warehouse owner in Komorniki, Poland, who saw a charred barrel in his yard. He took a picture of the tank in his backyard. He took a picture of the tank, which was about five feet long and three feet wide, and contacted police, who worked with the Polish space agency Polsa, to confirm that it was part of a SpaceX rocket. According to the BBC, a similar tank was also found in a forest near the town of Wira.
Polsa determined that the debris was part of the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket and that it entered the Earth’s atmosphere between 04:46 and 04:48. While most of the debris appears to have landed in Poland, there are reports that some parts may have also fallen in Germany and Ukraine. So far, no injuries have been reported as a result of the rocket crash.
SpaceX is best known for its reusable launch vehicles, which are designed for controlled return to Earth. But this is the first stage of a two-stage rocket. The second stage, which launches the payload into orbit, must burn up and disintegrate upon reentry. But this does not always happen – sometimes the fragments survive the fall and eventually fall to Earth. This is not even the first time that parts of a Falcon 9 rocket have been found – a tank similar to the one found in Poland was spotted in Brazil after a launch in 2014. Another landed on a farm in Washington state in 2021.
Typically, reentry for these rockets is designed to be more controlled, allowing parts to fall into the ocean, but this is not always the case. In fact, debris from SpaceX rockets seems to be becoming a growing problem. Earlier this year, the British Turks and Caicos Islands complained about rocket parts falling on them. Australia has been dealing with intermittent showers of SpaceX parts for several years now, and Australian airline Qantas was forced to delay some flights for six hours earlier this year to avoid falling rocket debris. There is nothing worse than seeing falling pieces of metal in the forecast.
