A Minnesota farmer was harvesting corn when an 11-foot-wide metallic object turned up in the field. If leading expert theories are anything to go by, the object may have been part of a Chinese rocket that launched weeks earlier.
The shiny, bowl-shaped object was discovered on October 14 in Scott Township, a rural area in west-central Minnesota about 140 miles from Minneapolis. The farmer reportedly noticed it while driving a combine through the cornfield, with the height of the surrounding crops suggesting the object may have been sitting there for roughly six weeks.
Authorities recovered the debris and moved it to a secure location. The U.S. Department of State later confirmed that the object had been secured and posed no danger to the public, while officials worked to establish exactly what it was.
The suspect is a Chinese rocket built to launch internet satellites
The strongest theory so far links the Minnesota object to a Zhuque-2E rocket built by Chinese aerospace company LandSpace. According to Ars Technica reporter Stephen Clark, LandSpace launched a Zhuque-2E on September 15 to deploy 10 satellites for Qianfan, a Chinese commercial broadband constellation designed to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink network.
After releasing its satellites, the rocket’s upper stage reportedly re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and broke apart as it fell back toward the planet.
Now, the Zhuque-2E’s upper stage is about 11 feet in diameter. That’s the same width as the object found in Minnesota. Three space experts consulted by the Minnesota Star Tribune also agreed that the debris likely came from the Chinese rocket. LandSpace, however, has not publicly acknowledged that debris from the launch ended up in the field.
The suspected connection makes sense, but officials have not definitively confirmed the object’s origin.
How does rocket debris end up in a cornfield?
Rocket stages do not simply disappear after delivering their payloads into orbit. Depending on their design and trajectory, discarded sections can fall back through Earth’s atmosphere, where the intense heat and forces of re-entry may destroy some components while leaving others intact.
Rocket operators typically try to direct discarded hardware toward the ocean, reducing the chances of debris landing in populated areas. It is unclear what happened in this case or why a suspected rocket component may have come down over rural Minnesota.
Minnesota is not the only place finding suspected space junk
Just days after the Minnesota discovery, authorities in Indonesia reported investigating large, torn pieces of metal found at a palm oil plantation in Borneo. That debris was also suspected of coming from a LandSpace rocket, this time one launched on October 14.
As more companies and countries send rockets and satellites into space, more hardware eventually needs to be disposed of or returned to Earth. Earlier this year, six large, shiny spheres washed up on a beach in northeastern Australia, prompting authorities to evacuate more than 1,000 people. Officials later determined that the objects were probably empty rocket fuel vessels and posed no threat to public safety.
A growing concern
For the first time, The European Space Agency’s 2026 Space Environment Report included a metric estimating the risk of casualties on the ground from returning space debris, with rocket bodies identified as the biggest source of that risk.
Looking at the numbers, more than 300 rockets launched over 4,000 new payloads into orbit last year. Meanwhile, roughly 10 new payloads enter orbit each day, and more than three intact satellites or rocket bodies re-enter the atmosphere daily.
Most falling debris does not injure anyone, and the everyday risk remains low. But as launch activity increases, the odds of surviving fragments reaching places where people live and work decrease.
“Even though the numbers are low compared to everyday risks in life, the chance of a casualty increased in recent years due to increased traffic,” the European Space Agency said.
Sources: Smithsonian Magazine, Ars TECHNICA