What would you do if you saw this
thing in your walnut orchard?
Credit: Kings County Sheriff's Office
A walnut farmer in central California
found a strange metal object in his
orchard on Oct. 13.
He called the local sheriff's office,
according to a KGET report . The sheriffs
reached out to Vandenberg Air Force
Base, and experts there reportedly said
the burnt husk was likely a fuel tank
from an Iridium communications
satellite. Specifically, it came from
Iridium 70, which according to the
satellite tracking site n2yo.com fell out
of its orbit three days earlier, on Oct. 10.
Iridium 70 was part of a constellation of
communications satellites first launched
in the late 1990s. This one, according to
Astronautix.com , rode a Delta 7920-10C
rocket into space on May 17, 1998 along
with Iridiums 72, 73, 74 and 75.
(Coincidentally, the launch site was
Vandenberg Air Force Base.) Of those
satellites, only Iridium 73 is still in orbit .
Iridium 70 hung in low-Earth orbit for 20
years, 4 months and 23 days; and for its
operational lifetime, it supported satellite
phone calls on the global Iridium
network . According to KGET, this is the
first piece recovered from an Iridium
satellite after re-entry. As Live Science
has previously reported , it's wildly
unlikely that any given de-orbiting object
will drop significant debris on land, let
alone anywhere where the debris might
be recognized.
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