A scorched hunk of metal that turned up in a US farmer’s cornfield may have handed China an awkward moment and technically an “international incident”, according to a British astronomer who has tracked rocket launches for more than 30 years.
The farmer found the bowl-shaped object, measuring about 3.35 metres (11 feet) across, while harvesting corn in west-central Minnesota on October 14. Online, some residents joked that aliens had landed, while Chinese internet users said it looked like a giant hotpot.
However, space observers said it most likely came from a Chinese rocket launched on September 15.
The dome appears to be the blackened end cap of a fuel tank, and it is exactly as wide as the Zhuque-2E rocket built by Beijing-based LandSpace, which had declared the mission a success.