A mysterious object that washed up on an Australian beach has been identified as debris from an Indian rocket, officials said Monday.<\/p>\n
The bulky barnacle-encrusted cylinder was first spotted in mid-July near remote Jurien Bay, a coastal region two hours’ drive north of Perth in Western Australia.<\/p>\n
Amateur sleuths speculated online that the object might have a military origin or even be linked to the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.<\/p>\n
But the Australian Space Agency said it had concluded the object was “most likely” debris from an “expended third-stage of a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle”.<\/p>\n
The medium-lift launch vehicle is operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation, the agency added.<\/p>\n
The object, which measures some two metres (six feet) high and has cables dangling from the top, is being kept in storage.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, officials from both countries are working together to “provide further confirmation to determine next steps, including considering obligations under the United Nations space treaties”, the Australian Space Agency said.<\/p>\n
It is not the first time Australia has found itself a landing ground for space junk — last August, a sheep farmer in New South Wales found a charred chunk from one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX missions jutting out of his paddock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A mysterious object that washed up on an Australian beach has been identified as debris from an Indian rocket, officials said Monday. The bulky barnacle-encrusted cylinder was first spotted in mid-July near remote Jurien Bay, a coastal region two hours’ drive north of Perth in Western Australia. Amateur sleuths speculated online that the object might … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestinhongkong.discoverhongkong.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestinhongkong.discoverhongkong.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestinhongkong.discoverhongkong.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestinhongkong.discoverhongkong.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestinhongkong.discoverhongkong.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bestinhongkong.discoverhongkong.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12506,"href":"https:\/\/bestinhongkong.discoverhongkong.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12505\/revisions\/12506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bestinhongkong.discoverhongkong.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestinhongkong.discoverhongkong.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bestinhongkong.discoverhongkong.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}