Brazilian Space Agency investigates alleged space junk that fell in Paraná

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João Ricardo Portes, 58, resident of the rural area of ​​the municipality of São Mateus do Sul (PR), 150 kilometers from Curitiba, came across a metal piece about four meters long, twisted, about one hundred meters from his house. , on the morning of last Wednesday (16). Amazed, he called his wife, Joseane Franco Portes, 56, to see what he had found.

A team from the AEB (Brazilian Space Agency) was at the site this Friday to investigate the material, supposedly space junk. The area was isolated and the piece covered.

Until publication, the report did not receive a response from the agency, linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, about the work on the Portes family’s property, in the locality known as Água Suja.

According to Bramon (Brazilian Meteor Monitoring Network), the piece may be a part of a rocket from the company SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who also owns Tesla.

The re-entry of the rocket would have been seen in the sky of the region on March 8, according to a publication by Bramon on its website, reflecting the case.

The network also says that the municipality of Paraná is “practically below the observed re-entry trajectory” and that, analyzing images, “some similarities were found” between the object and parts of the rocket from Musk’s company.

A week earlier, Portes and his wife, they say, were woken up by a loud bang at dawn. Joseane says they thought it could be an explosion at a nearby metallurgical plant or a car accident on the nearby highway, but they didn’t see anything different outside the house.

“It passed like a thunderstorm, that a heavy rain is going to come, you know? It was like this noise, and then another one came, which I think was the time that piece fell. I could hear it in the city, a lot of people heard it”, he says. Is it over there.

Portes didn’t find the piece of metal until the week after the noise, when he went out to check whether wind and rain had damaged any fences on the property.

Amid the news of light trails in the sky and noises, reported in the southern region of Paraná and northern Santa Catarina, he immediately thought, he says, that the piece could be related to space junk.

“At first I thought it was a tent, that people were invading my land, but I noticed that it was a piece of metal. I got close and thought it was the space junk that passed through here, on the last 8th”, he says.

“We didn’t play, we didn’t do anything, for fear of radiation. At first we didn’t know anything about the material. It passed 100 meters from my house and 40 [metros] gives [rodovia] PR-151”, says he, who works at a catering and event decoration company that he maintains with his wife.

Joseane also says that she decided to record a video to show her sister-in-law the find and is not sure how it became public. The footage shows some broken branches and shallow holes in the ground, with grass raised.

“Thank God it didn’t fall on top of the house,” she says.

The couple was informed that the owners of the metal piece, yet to be identified, have a period of 90 days to remove it from the site. If not, they can keep the piece.

“If they leave it to me, I’ll put it in the garden here, plant some flowers and show my grandchildren, in the future, that a rocket has fallen”, she jokes.

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