A giant metal object washed up on Australian shores in July, and sparked a huge debate about where it may have come from – but experts now think they have an answer.
The cylinder, around 2.5m in height and partly made of a gold-coloured woven material, was discovered on a remote beach around 250km north of Perth at Green Head.
It bewildered authorities to begin with. Seemingly damaged and leaning on its side, the cylinder’s lower half looked like it had been ripped away from another part. It was also covered in debris from the sea.
When its discovery was first reported on July 16, local police said it was “being treated as hazardous until the origin of it can be established” – although they said the object “did not originate from a commercial aircraft”.
By the next day, the state’s fire department chemistry centre had “determined the object is safe and there is no current risk to the community”.
But, as police coordinated a joint investigation into its origins, the public were still told to stay away, partly to “ensure the preservation of potential evidence”.
Suggestions it came from the missing MH370 flight – which disappeared in 2014 – were quickly dismissed by the authorities.
However, the cylinder was quickly sucked into alien speculation, especially after Australian Space Agency said acknowledged it “could be from a foreign space launch vehicle”.
And only in June, a whistleblower claimed the US federal government have an “intact” UFO.
Although local police discouraged the public from coming up with any unfounded theories, the inevitable claims that it was a sign of extra-terrestrial life began almost as soon as the photo was shared online.
After all, it arrived around the time a six-foot skeleton was discovered washed on Queenslands Capricornia Coast ( the opposite side of Australia), which the internet decided was possibly proof of a ... mermaid.
Sadly, experts don’t think this was a sign from life in outer space.
The Australian Space Agency finally said on July 31 that cylinder probably came from an Indian launch vehicle, possibly from a downed airliner.
After an investigation, it concluded that it most likely came an expended third stage of a polar satellite launch vehicle, operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation.
The company has been active in recent months and had a successful satellite launch on Sunday.
The debris may now be placed in a local museum, much like the wreckage of Skylab which fell to Earth in 1979.
That was the US’s first space station launched by NASA, and it orbited for about five years before breaking apart and scattered debris across the town of Esperance.