Curious story in AFP yesterday:
Full story here – Click the image above for a large view of the object.
Me thinks it is from either of these spacecraft:
The Vostok had a whole ring of spherical tanks, and maybe and old piece of space junk from one of the old service modules finally came home.
Only the main sphere is kept in re-entry, everything else is discarded.
Though given the trajectory when the service package is jettisoned, and because Vostok flight was in the early 1960’s, it seems doubtful such objects would remain in orbit, though possible if they “skipped” off the atmosphere after jettison.
Another candidate is the Soyuz, still in use today:
Under the shroud of the instrumentation support module there are a number of spherical tanks, as seen in this diagram:
Hi Anthony,
The tank is from a Salyut 7 – Kosmos 1686 spacecraft. It is made of titanium and was used to store helium.
See: http://www.bimsociety.org/gallery/Salyut%207%20-%20Kosmos%201686%20Helium%20Tank/dirindex.html
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Looks right:
Roy Spencer thinks it is a hydrazine tank:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/12/spaceballs/
Probably a standard interchangeable tank used on many spacecraft. Russians tend to reuse a lot of technology.
Only if the Jolly Green Giant is moonlighting as St. Nick!!
Pamela Gray says:
December 23, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Sleigh bell… funny.
spell that slay-bell,
because that’s what it would do if it hit you…
Who has balls of titanium, and is missing one?
Could this be the remains of the original hemispheres used in the Magdeburg Experiment in the 17th Century.
Titanium? This is just proof of global warming forcing brass monkeys to adapt and evolve into utilising stronger metals. Titanium monkey wants his ball back, and is looking for a TIG welder.
Here’s a basket of them.
http://web.tradekorea.com/upload_file2/product/949/P00269949/cbe9caa5_713b561d_59e4_413f_9090_2be9028d98ef.jpg
If I lived in Namibia and had some time on my hands, I would build a catapult, find some ball mill balls and see how far I could chuck those suckers. If I ever found a newspaper article about people thinking they were from a space ship – well – I’d just throw one or two every year just to tease their stupidity.
This is how the story goes…
The increasing frequency of falling spaceballs has lead scientists at UEA to model their frequency in relation to GHG emissions.
Startling new results show strong corellation between metal objects appearing unexpectedly on the Earth and Atmospheric CO2 emissions.
“When we removed all known natural signals from the analysis we were were left with the conclusion that this was of anthropogenic origin.”
“We ran our models using the A1B emission scenario and project that the earth will be completely covered in titanium by the year 2100”
The authors of the study say that this is probably linked to global warming.
NASA should take a note: Spherical objects with a titanium outer ‘skin’ can survive the atmosphere reentry intact.
They’ve neutered R2D2?
Looks like a big hunk of frozen poo that fell from a passing jetliner…
(That’s what they proved in the movie “Joe Dirt”)
Reaujere says:
December 23, 2011 at 10:35 am
Not from the Salyut 7 (it re-entered in Feb. 1991). My guess would be part of the RCS from the Zenit 2nd stage from the Russian’s Phobos-Grunt mission.
~
Guess we all knew that the Russians have balls..
~
M.A.Vukcevic says:
December 23, 2011 at 2:39 pm
NASA should take a note: Spherical objects with a titanium outer ‘skin’ can survive the atmosphere reentry intact.
~
I’ll see your “titanium sphereical objects” and raise you a “tail-less Comet Lovejoy.”
http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/images/lovejoy/lovejoy_20111215b_cor1.mov
“”..This is the SECCHI COR-1 (inner coronagraph) image on the STEREO-B satellite. From the perspective of STEREO-B, the comet moved diagonally across the face of the Sun, looped around it, and re-emerged from around the back. The comet is obvious to see as it enters the camera in the lower right. We lose sight of the head of the comet at ~2300UT as it disappears behind the occulting disk. (We superimposed a Sun image on the movie — this camera doesn’t actually see that.) Then at around 0130UT we see the bright tail of the comet appear again in the upper-left of the image and continue to move out. Here’s the fun part: this is not the comet itself! Keep watching, and at ~0530UT you’ll see the comet — minus a tail! — emerge on the right hand side of the central disk and move towards the lower-right of the image, finally exiting at ~10:45UT.
So if the comet re-emerges on the right without its tail, does that mean the bright thing that flew out of the top-left of the image is its tail?? Absolutely! I summarize the situation here. What we’re seeing is the comet streaming into our field of view with a vast cloud of dust and ice trailing in its wake. The comet reaches the Sun, loops sharply around it, and head out around the back of the Sun. But the tail material we see has already left the comet and is just going to carry on in a straight line from the time it was ejected, while at the same time be pushed away from the Sun by the radiation pressure from the Sun itself. So we’re actually seeing the tail material sweeping out towards us, while the comet races off to do its own thing.
OK, why does Lovejoy not have a tail after it reappears? How did it get torn off? Well it didn’t actually get “torn off”, as it was never physically connected to begin with, but what likely happened was that the dust and ice produced by the comet was no longer able to follow the comet in its path as the relatively dense and incredibly hot solar corona “captured”..””
http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/images/lovejoy/lovejoy_20111215b_cor1.mov
http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/index.php?p=news/birthday_comet#bottom
Did C3PO ever have any? Or was he always the Mechanical Metro?
Would have been interesting if the thing had a temperature logger working on the way down. I wonder what the max temp was.
It wasn’t 1 m in diameter…that was from some reporter that doesn’t know the difference between diameter and *circumference*. It was about 14 inches in diameter, which is a pretty good match to the 58 liter volume of this one manufactured in Germany:
http://cs.astrium.eads.net/sp/spacecraft-propulsion/propellant-tanks/39-litre-hydrazine-bladder-tank.html
Atmospheric reentry demonstrator. In more ways than one.
In this part of the world it would have been just as likely to be a rogue Bludger.
http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Bludger
A titanium bladder tank, that can survive re-entry.
I wonder if that will work in people ?
39 Liters is a lot of pee.
I think it’s just the big balls of the scientists who modify climate data and ask us to believe it. ;-))
Judging by the picture above,If you cut it in half,
it would make one hell of a titanium bra supporter…
anatomically correct at that !
I don’t think the bladder survived, just the tank. It got hot. Real hot.
The worst offenders of space debris, in terms of ability to survive re-entry relatively intact, appear to be titanium spherical pressure vessels used for pressurized fuels,This link will show a pic of one that survived rentry which is identical with the one that fell in Namibia. .It’s from a Delta II titanium pressure vessel, which often survive re-entry intact.
….
http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=33760&p=440180#p440180
Titanium oxides are very bright white, bronze or violet. Titanium composition is highly probable!
“metal alloy known to man” Nah… Obviously this assembly is part of the super spectrometer the “Grey” has used to detect that atmosphere of Earth was subject to a “catastrophic” increase of Carbon(IV) oxide, revealing how dangerous the human “pest” really is, mandating it’s immediate eradication!!!
Maybe after all, aliens are not grey but green like in the good old time when they were coming from Mars…
Spaceballs?!? Well s#!+, there goes the neighborhood….
Well, it’s happening. Aliens have had enough of our Global Warming, and they’ve begun their attack.
They’re throwing stuff at us.
Space Balls, “What’s the matter colonel sanders? Chicken?!”
Did anyone catch the Geminid meteor shower this year? It was one of the best I’ve ever seen and there was a full moon. I was wondering if meteor showers appear brighter if the atmosphere they pass through is colder? Or can less activity from the sun influence the magnetosphere some how to effect smaller objects entering the atmosphere? there was more fireballs this year which was amazing to see. I’m convincing my self of a physical link. Anyone got a thought on this?
Kind regards to all and merry Christmas! 🙂