WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland’s space agency POLSA is looking into whether an unidentified object found near the western Polish city of Poznan on Wednesday is debris from Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, a spokesperson said.
The object, resembling a container, appeared on Wednesday morning on the premises of a company in Komorniki, near Poznan, according to Polish police.
“We cannot rule out that the object found near Poznan comes from the Falcon 9 rocket, whose flight we monitored. Confirmation of this requires appropriate examination,” said Agnieszka Gapys, press officer for POLSA.
Later on Wednesday, a second “identical” container was found in the forest of Wiry village, police told Reuters. The two locations are approximately 30 km (19 miles) from each other.
“For now, the police are securing the second container found. When the activities related to the inspection of the first object are completed, we will perform similar activities in the forest,” said Lukasz Paterski, press officer of the Poznan police.
POLSA said in a statement that the approximately 4-ton rocket it was monitoring on Wednesday morning was from the SpaceX Starlink Group mission, which launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on February 1.
“POLSA is in constant contact with the police,” the agency said separately. “We already have photos of the objects that fell near Poznan. The POLSA Space Security Department will verify the object with SpaceX.”
The Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage rocket designed and manufactured by SpaceX for the transport of people and payloads into the Earth’s orbit.
Poland has been on alert for possible spillover of weaponry from the war in neighbouring Ukraine, especially since two people were killed near the border in November 2022 by what Warsaw concluded was a misfired Ukrainian air defence missile.
Polish state news agency PAP reported on Wednesday morning that flashes could be seen in the sky in some parts of Poland.
The press officer of the Greater Poland State Fire Service, Martin Halasz, told PAP that at the request of the police, a chemical and ecological rescue group had been sent to the site to rule out the possibility that the found item posed any threat.
(Reporting by Barbara Erling; Editing by Jan Harvey and Bill Berkrot)
