A piece of metal found on a remote trail at a luxury camping resort in North Carolina came from a SpaceX Dragon capsule, NASA said, confirming that the mysterious object is another piece of space junk that recently landed on Earth.
The debris came from the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that re-entered Earth’s atmosphere after a trip 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 equipment from one of the space agency’s flights landed in their home. Separately, SpaceX employees traveled to a Canadian farm to retrieve debris found there.
The North Carolina site was found in the mountains about 23 miles west of Asheville, North Carolina, at a resort called the Glamping Collective. The private property has about five miles of private hiking trails, and guests stay in geodesic domes and cabins.
Matt Bear, founder of the Glamping Collective, said about eight acres of the 160-acre property had been developed and the site happened to land on one of the hiking trails. “It could have been anywhere else on the property and no one would have ever seen it,” he said.
A member of the resort’s landscaping team discovered the debris on May 22 while performing routine trail maintenance. Mr. Barre estimated that the object weighed about 100 pounds and measured 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 Barre recalls that when they were building the resort’s geodesic domes, locals said it looked as if UFOs 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 to guests at the resort. Mr. Barre said officials had not heard anything about NASA or SpaceX.
The debris came from the trunk of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, NASA said. The Dragon spacecraft has two sections: a pressurized one, which can carry people or cargo, and an unpressurized section, the trunk, which has hardware used to power and cool the spacecraft while in orbit. The trunk remains attached to the Dragon until shortly before re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, when it is ejected and disintegrates.
SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.
“During its original design, the trunk of the Dragon spacecraft was rated to break up on re-entry and was predicted to burn up completely,” NASA said. “Information from debris retrieval enables teams to improve debris modeling. NASA and SpaceX will continue to explore additional solutions as we learn from the recovered debris.
After WLOS, a local news channel in North Carolina, reported on the debris found at the Glamping Collective, residents of nearby towns told the news channel that they found smaller pieces of similar-looking objects in their yards.
There are millions of pieces of space junk flying in low Earth orbit, the region of space where objects fly at an altitude of 1,200 miles or lower, according to NASA.
Last week, a decommissioned Russian satellite disintegrated into more than 100 pieces, 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.
Part of the trunk of a SpaceX Dragon capsule was discovered by a sheep herder in a remote corner of southeastern Australia in July 2022. Last month, SpaceX employees retrieved debris from a farm in Saskatchewan, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
A Naples, Florida, family sued NASA in May after their home was hit in March by a piece of space debris. The space agency said it expected the debris to burn up completely during reentry through Earth’s atmosphere.
NASA said that “in the unlikely event” a person finds space debris, they should not attempt to handle or retrieve it, but should contact the SpaceX Debris Hotline.
