A piece of metal found on a secluded trail at a luxury camping resort in North Carolina came from SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, NASA said, confirming that the mysterious object was another piece of space debris that recently landed on Earth.
The debris came from a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that re-entered Earth’s atmosphere after en route to the International Space Station, NASA said in an emailed statement. “NASA is not aware of any structural damage or injuries resulting from these findings,” the space agency said.
Space debris is equipment left in space by humans and can include objects such as defunct satellites or small hardware from spacecraft. In recent months, a family in Florida sued NASA after a device from one of the space agency’s flights landed in their home. Separately, SpaceX personnel traveled to a Canadian farm to retrieve debris found there.
The North Carolina object was found in the mountains about 23 miles west of Asheville, NC, at a resort called the Glamping Collective. The private property has about five miles of private hiking trails and its guests stay in geodesic domes and cabins.
Matt Bare, founder of the Glamping Collective, said about eight acres of the 160-acre site were built and the facility happened to land on one of the hiking trails. “It could have been almost anywhere else on the property and no one would have ever seen it,” he said.
A member of the resort’s grounds crew found the debris on May 22 during routine trail maintenance. Mr. Bare estimated that the object weighed about 100 pounds and was about 4 feet by 4 feet. He said they quickly realized the object must have come from the sky because of its size and the remote location where it was found.
Mr Bare recalled that when they were building the resort’s geodesic domes, locals said it looked as if a UFO had landed on the mountain. “We just laughed it off, but two years later we actually have unidentified flying objects that have landed on Crabtree Mountain.
The space junk is now on display for guests to view at the resort. Mr Bare said the staff had not heard of NASA or SpaceX.
The debris came from the trunk of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, NASA said. The Dragon spacecraft has two sections: the pressurized section, which can carry people or cargo, and the unpressurized section, the trunk, which holds the hardware used to power and cool the spacecraft in orbit. The log remains attached to the dragon until shortly before re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, when it is thrown off and disintegrates.
SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.
“During its initial design, the Dragon spacecraft trunk was evaluated for disintegration on re-entry and was predicted to burn up completely,” NASA said. “Information from debris recovery provides teams with an opportunity to improve debris modeling. NASA and SpaceX will continue to explore other solutions as we learn from the discovered debris.”
After WLOS, a local news outlet in North Carolina, reported on the debris found at the Glamping Collective, residents in nearby towns told the news outlet that they found smaller pieces of similar-looking items in their yards.
According to NASA, millions of pieces of space debris fly in low Earth orbit, which is the region of space where objects fly at an altitude of 1,200 miles or lower.
Last week, a decommissioned Russian satellite disintegrated into more than 100 fragments, creating a debris cloud in low Earth orbit, prompting astronauts aboard the International Space Station to take protective measures for about an hour.
Space junk can also find its way to Earth.
A piece of the SpaceX Dragon capsule’s trunk was found by a sheep herder in a remote corner of southeastern Australia in July 2022. Last month, SpaceX employees picked up debris from a farm in Saskatchewan, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
A Naples, Florida, family sued NASA in May after a piece of space debris hit their home in March. The space agency said it expected the debris to burn up completely during entry through Earth’s atmosphere.
NASA said that in the “unlikely event” a person should find space junk, they should not attempt to handle or retrieve it, but should contact SpaceX’s junk hotline.