Indonesia: Alleged car-sized rocket part crashes on plantation

Part of rubble in Indonesia: “Pretty large aluminum plate”

A piece of rubble, the size of a car, has fallen on a palm oil plantation in Indonesia. The object may come from a Chinese space rocket, investigations have been taken, informed the competent authority. The debris fell a few kilometers from homes, workers were not on the plantation at that moment.

Normally, space missions are planned in such a way that any falling parts completely burn up in the Earth's atmosphere or only crash over uninhabited area. However, there are always incidents, also because more and more satellites are brought into space.

According to plantation worker Wardi Tamroni, the part the size of a car crashed about three kilometres from a residential complex of the PT Agro Bukit oil palm plantation, near the town of Sampit in central Kalimantan province. “At first I thought it was plane debris,” he told AFP. He discovered the part on Monday morning, after residents heard a loud bang the night before.

“Normally, we are deployed in the area where the part is impacted,” added the 51-year-old. “Fortunately, all the workers had already gone home and no one had left on the plantation.”

A police official described the debris as a “pretty large aluminum plate up to nine meters long” that “has an irregular shape and visible burn marks.” The Indonesian National Research and Innovation Authority (Brin) said the debris was apparently from a Chinese Zhuque-2E rocket.

According to the Chinese government, a Zhuque 2E rocket launched 10 satellites from a launch site in the northwest of the country last week.

The Chinese space agency was initially not reachable for an opinion. But according to media reports, components in the U.S. state of Minnesota have also been hit, which should come from a Chinese missile.

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