Residents of Lone Khin near Hpakant in Kachin State, Myanmar, were alarmed by a mysterious object which fell from the sky on Thursday 10 November 2016. The object is described as being a metal cylinder 3.7 m in length and 1.2 m in diameter, with protruding wires and Chinese writing on the outside. After striking the ground a first time the object bounced about 50 m before coming to rest in an open area at a jade mine (Myanmar is the world's largest producer of jade). A second smaller piece of debris is reported to have damaged a nearby house, though nobody was injured by either event.
The object which fell from the sky onto a Myanmar jade mine on 10 November 2016. Yanniang Pyi Sone Aung.
The object was initially thought to be a piece of an aircraft engine, but has now been linked to the launch of an experimental X-ray pulsar navigation spacecraft, the Maichong Xing Shiyan Weixing (which is intended to test the theory that radio emissions from pulsars could be used to navigate spacecraft) on a Long March Rocket 11from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Inner Mongolia, China, earlier that day. These rockets comprise a series of booster stages that are jettisoned as the craft rises through the atmosphere. As with similar rockets launched by other nations, these jettisoned stages are intended to fall back to Earth over open water or sparsely populated regions (the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center is in the Gobi Desert), though the possibility of one being blown to a different area by high winds does exist.
Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.