14 DAY TRIAL // Namibian authorities discovered a weird-looking metallic sphere in a patch of grasslands located about 750 kilometers (480 miles) away from the capital Windhoek. The object is hollow, and made up of two pieces of metal welded together. Experts had a very tough time determining what it is.
In fact, Namibian officials said that they contacted NASA and the European Space Agency on Wednesday, December 21, asking for their assistance in determining what the object is, and where it came from. It could be that it's nothing more than a piece of space junk from low-Earth orbit.
The fact that the orbit is getting increasingly clogged with all sorts of debris is no longer a mystery to anyone and, though researchers are working on ways of clearing it, the situation is only bound to get worse before it gets better.
With this strange metal ball, the problem becomes increasingly complex, showing that even large objects can survive atmospheric reentry, and make their way intact to the ground. Luckily, this time, the falling debris did not hit anyone.
The sphere was identified some time ago, but authorities kept mum until they could run some tests, and determine what it is. Another concern was establishing if the object is dangerous or not, AFP reports.
According to Space, the metal ball weighs around 6 kilograms (13 pounds), and is around 35 centimeters (14 inches) wide. When it hit the ground, it produced a 3.8-meter (12.5-foot) wide crater, with a depth of around 33 centimeters, or 13 inches.
“It is not an explosive device, but rather hollow, but we had to investigate all this first,” Agence France-Press heard from the Namibian police deputy inspector general, Vilho Hifindaka. Despite all tests, there are still no clear clues as to the object's origins and purpose.
This is why authorities eventually decided to contact both NASA and ESA. The thinking went that there's a high chance the object comes from a rocket or spacecraft launched by one of these two organizations. The Russians, Chinese and Indians are options in this scenario as well.
As the orbit gets increasingly clogged, more and more pieces of debris are beginning to fall through the atmosphere, including two whole satellites over the past three months. The NASA Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) fell to the ground in September.
Less than a month later, the German Roentgen Satellite (ROSAT) also impacted the ground. The Russian-built Phobos-Grunt missions, launched towards Mars in November, failed in orbit, and is now expected to reenter the atmosphere by the middle of January, 2012.