Now that’s an unusual beach combing discovery.
Engineers are examining an object that washed ashore in Alsea Bay Friday afternoon to see if it could be debris from a SpaceX rocket that crashed through the atmosphere last month.
On Friday afternoon, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said deputies responded to Alsea Bay after reports that someone had found charred debris they thought could be from a spacecraft.
The object, a large black cylindrical item, is about as long as a wood pallet.
A boater removed the debris and stored it at a Waldport business, and the sheriff’s office contacted several other authorities, including the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue, who determined that the object did not contain any hazardous materials.
Authorities contacted SpaceX, which from looking at photos was not immediately able to tell whether the object was from one of their spacecrafts.
But the agency said the item looked like it could be a “composite overwrapped pressure vessel,” an object often used in spacecrafts, the sheriff’s department said in a news release. The agency determined it could be safely transported for further inspection.
The sheriff’s office did not specify where the object was taken. Many Oregon residents in late March spotted a large streak across the sky that authorities believe was debris from a failed SpaceX launch and a similar object was recovered from a farmer’s field in eastern Washington shortly afterwards.
— The Oregonian and YachatsNews.com
