SCOTT TOWNSHIP: Authorities are investigating an object in a Minnesota cornfield that may have come from a Chinese rocket. Officials have not confirmed the connection, although.
A farmer discovered the metallic structure while combining his field in west-central Minnesota’s Stevens County. Deputies attended after receiving a report of unusual debris on October 14.
The Stevens County Sheriff’s Office described it as “presumably a space object” and confirmed it measured about 11 feet in diameter.
Tthe object carried serial numbers. The station’s reporting also linked the sheriff’s preliminary assessment to charring visible on the structure. Authorities said it posed no public danger.
State and federal agencies joined efforts to identify the debris and establish ownership. Local coverage described arrangements to remove it but did not identify the federal agencies involved.
Separately, the discovery to a Zhuque-2E launch from China’s Gobi Desert on September 15. The upper stage’s matching diameter and the timing and direction of debris seen crossing the American Midwest.
Videos recorded after the launch showed fiery fragments travelling across the night sky. Those observations support a possible connection, but do not amount to an official identification of the recovered object.
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Chinese state news agency Xinhua confirmed that the launch placed 10 networking satellites into their intended orbits. That account confirms the mission’s occurrence, not the origin of the Minnesota debris. LandSpace has not publicly acknowledged the discovery.
Any compensation claim would depend on identifying the object and establishing damage. Under the 1972 Space Liability Convention, a launching state bears liability for damage its space objects cause on Earth’s surface.
Neither the object’s landing date nor a verified account of property damage has been established yet.
(With additional input from MPR News, KARE 11 and Xinhua)
