Eighteen-Year-Old U.S. Rocket Motor Casing Found in Australia

Here's some news from NASA's Orbital Debris mitigation office: a Delta solid rocket motor casing has been found in the outback of Australia.

This piece of space junk (shout-out to Jeff Horwich of "In the Loop", who now has a history with me 'n space junk) is from

..a Delta 2 launch vehicle used on 12 June 1990 to deliver the Indian INSAT-1D geosynchronous spacecraft from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

This solid rocket motor served as the launch vehicle’s third stage (U.S. Satellite Number 20645, International Designator  1990-051C), which carried the payload from a low altitude parking orbit  into a geosynchronous transfer orbit of 135 km by 39,750 km with an inclination of 27.2 degrees. Reentry of the stage occurred a few months later.

The object joins similar solid rocket motor casings found in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and
Argentina during the past several years.

So, after not burning up in re-entry, this casing went walkabout  in Australia's outback, right? Right. Arthur Taylor spied it while flying a Cessna rounding up cattle and Michael White snapped this photo.

How's that for hands across the oceans and all that?  But wait--in all those numbers NASA threw at us, where's the beef (shout-out to cattle drives)?

Just how heavy is that thing? Not only that, but was there any left-over space slime left on that thing?  I went sleuthing to the Orbital Debris office to ask them, only to  discover that a) no phone numbers are provided for contacts but  b) I can email or fax them.

Hey! What's up with that? Excuse me, I seem to be suffering from Larry Grimes Unavoidable Hyper-reflexive Awful Pun Syndrome (U-HAPS). Grimes is a career NASA and  Kennedy Space Center employee, now retired, who was reknowned for finding the most awful puns even in the midst of say, a three-million-acre pasture like the one with the casing.

Don't worry, though, despite lack of first contact  (HAPS!)with the NASA space junk folks, I'm on the case (H--oh, never mind). I've emailed the NASA Orbital Debris office to ask the question of the day: if this thing had landed, say, on my house, how bad would I be feeling about this UFO?

Well, ex-UFO. Once the folks at Kennedy Space Center got this space trash's number, they were able to search out records to make it an IFO,F (Identified Flying Object, Former--terminology mine).

In case you want to get the low-down on space junk, the Debris folks even publish a newsletter. They proudly advertise: "The Orbital Debris Quarterly News (ODQN) contains the latest breaking news in orbital debris research."

Breaking news? (HAPS!) So how much did that thing weigh?

I'll let you know when I get the answer to "what's up with down?"