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 was another piece of space debris that recently landed on Earth.
The debris came from the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that had re-entered Earth’s atmosphere after traveling to the International Space Station, NASA said in an emailed statement. “NASA is not aware of any structural damage or injury 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 equipment from spacecraft. In recent months, a Florida family sued NASA because a piece of equipment from one of the space agency’s flights landed on their home. Separately, SpaceX workers traveled to a Canadian farm to retrieve debris found there.
The North Carolina facility was found in the mountains about 23 miles west of Asheville, NC, at a resort called the Glamping Collective. The private property has about five miles of private hiking trails, and its guests stay in domes and geodesic cabins.
Matt Bare, a founder of the Glamping Collective, said about eight acres of the 160-acre property have been developed and the facility sits on one of the hiking trails. “It could have been almost anywhere else on the property and no one would have ever seen it,” he said.
A member of the resort’s landscaping crew found the debris on May 22 while doing routine trail maintenance. Mr. Bare estimated that the object weighed about 100 pounds and was about 4 feet by 4 feet in size. 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. Bare recalled that when the resort’s geodesic domes were being built, locals said it looked as if UFOs had landed on the mountain. “We just laugh, but two years later, we actually have unidentified flying objects that have landed on Crabtree Mountain.”
The space debris is now on display for visitors to view at the resort. Mr. Bare said employees had not heard from NASA or SpaceX.
The debris came from the trunk of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, NASA said. The Dragon spacecraft has two sections: a pressurized section that can carry people or cargo, and a pressurized section, the trunk, which has equipment used to power and cool the spacecraft during orbit. The trunk remains attached to the Dragon until shortly before re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, when it is ejected and explodes.
SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.
“During its initial design, the Dragon spacecraft trunk was rated for re-entry separation and was predicted to burn completely,” NASA said. “Information from debris recovery provides an opportunity for teams to improve debris modeling. NASA and SpaceX will continue to explore additional solutions as we learn from the debris discovered.”
After WLOS, a local news channel in North Carolina, reported on the debris found at the Glamping Collective, residents in nearby towns told the news channel that they had found smaller pieces of similar-looking objects in their yards.
There are millions of pieces of space debris 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 that prompted astronauts on the International Space Station to take protective measures for about an hour.
Space debris can also find its way to Earth.
Part of the trunk of a SpaceX Dragon capsule was found by a shepherd 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 family in Naples, Fla., sued NASA in May after their home was hit in March by a piece of space debris. The space agency said it had expected the debris to burn up completely on re-entry into 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 that they should contact SpaceX’s debris hotline.