Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chief S Somanath has said there is "no mystery" about the fact that the object that washed up on an Australian beach a few days back is a "part of some rocket". However, he also said that India cannot confirm whether the object is a part of an Indian rocket unless the country analyses it, the BBC reported Wednesday. "We can't confirm it's ours unless we analyse it," the ISRO Chief said. The mysterious, dome-shaped object was discovered on July 15, 2023, near the beach in Green Head in Western Australia, about 250 kilometres north of the city of Perth.
It is cylindrical in shape, has a width of 2.5 metres and a length between 2.5 and three metres.
Space experts speculate the object to be a part of an Indian rocket, according to a report by ABC News.
Experts ruled out the possibility of the object being a part of LVM3, which recently launched Chandrayaan-3, India's third lunar exploration mission.
This is because according to the experts, the object has been in the water for at least a few months.
According to the Australian Space Agency (ASA), there is a possibility that the giant cylinder could have fallen from a "foreign space launch vehicle".
Therefore, several people started speculating that the object was a fuel tank of a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
Some people initially speculated the object to be a part of MH370, the plane that went missing in 2014 off the west Australian coast.
However, aviation experts said that the object is not a part of a commercial aircraft, but possibly a fuel tank from a rocket that had fallen into the Indian Ocean.
Quoting Somanath, a BBC report said some of the PSLV parts are known to have fallen in the sea behind Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone, and the object may have been floating for a long time and finally reached shore.
The ISRO Chief also said that no danger was associated with the debris, according to the BBC report.
According to the ABC News report, a front-end loader wrapped the object in plastic, following which it was driven to a locked storage facility. Andrea Boyd, a European Space Agency (ESA) engineer, said experts believed the object fell to the ground from an Indian rocket launching a satellite.
Quoting Boyd, the report said the experts are pretty sure based on the shape and size of the object that it is an upper-stage engine from an Indian rocket used for a lot of different missions. She also said that India has been using these tickets since the 1990s, and has launched more than 50 missions.
Boyd stated that based on the amount of barnacles, the object is probably not a part of any rocket launched this year.
However, when an object is thrown around the object, it tends to look older than it would normally, Boyd said.
She explained that it takes a lot of effort to get up to orbit, and hence, the first, second and third stage engines usually fall off and end up in the Indian Ocean. Therefore there is a possibility that the object came with the currents and washed up on the beach.
Boyd said that there is a United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, and they have an outer space treaty that everyone has signed saying that whoever launches something into space is responsible for it right until the very end, according to the report.
She also said that the ASA is looking into the matter, and is talking to India's space agency to try and collaborate on cleaning this up properly.
Boyd also called Western Australia a "lucky spot" for space junk. She has advised against touching the object.
In a statement, the Western Australia Police Force said they are coordinating a joint investigation into the origins of the object, and urged people to refrain from conclusions.
They warned that the object is being treated as hazardous, until its origin can be established.
They also said it appears that the object did not originate from a commercial aircraft.