Kings County Sheriff's Office, California, received an unusual call on October 18 from a walnut farmer who claimed to have found a strange, large metal object of unknown origin that had smashed into his orchard, local news outlet Kron4 reported, citing the sheriff's office. When officers arrived at the site, they found a helmet-like, charred, metallic object and assumed that it was part of a satellite.
Mysterious space object that landed on California ranch identified https://t.co/CqBRlMYhz6 pic.twitter.com/vNQfeKApVG
— Rich Tehrani @LicensingLive, Nov 12-13 #SanJose (@rtehrani) October 19, 2018
After the sheriff's office inquired with the nearby Vandenberg Air Force Base, which conducts launches of rockets into space, on the origin of the object, it turned out to be a fuel tank from a communications satellite owned by Iridium Communications, which provides satellite telephone services around the world.
An Iridium representative, contacted by the police, confirmed that it was a part of their decommissioned Iridium Satellite #70, launched between late 1997 and early 1998. The satellite had been orbiting Earth, along with other man-made space junk, until it eventually re-entered the atmosphere. It's unclear where the rest of the satellite crashed.
