A large metallic object has turned up in a Minnesota cornfield, raising questions about where it came from and how it got there. On the afternoon of October 14, sheriff’s deputies responded to a call that “foreign debris” had been found in a cornfield in Scott Township, a rural area in the west-central part of the state about 140 miles from Minneapolis. When they arrived, they found a shiny, bowl-shaped, 11-foot-wide object resting on the ground, according to a Facebook post from the Stevens County Sheriff’s Office.
A farmer had stumbled upon the object while driving a combine—a large vehicle that harvests crops—through the field. Based on the height of the corn underneath, the farmer suspects the metal hunk had been there for about six weeks, reports KARE 11’s Felicity Dachel. Federal officials responded, and the mysterious object was taken to a secure location.
So, I think somebody way up the food chain above my head knows what this thing is, but they are not even telling us.” Later, Dingman referred all questions to the U.S. A spokesperson for the federal agency tells the Minnesota Star Tribune’s Berg that it is “working with interagency partners to determine the nature and origin of the debris” and that the object had “been secured and poses no danger to the public.” Resident Tena Wilts got a good look at the object before it was removed. She spotted the mysterious hunk of metal while driving to her parents’ home, which is three miles away from the field.
Wilts described it as “very large,” adding that it’s “bizarre that it just kind of landed there in the middle of a field.” “We had a tornado through the area a few weeks ago, so that came to mind,” she told the Minnesota Star Tribune earlier this month. On social media, commenters suggested everything from a piece of the Tilt-A-Whirl amusement park ride to the silver saucer sled used by Clark Griswold, played by Chevy Chase, in the 1989 holiday comedy National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Stephen Clark, a reporter for Ars Technica, proposes that the object was part of a Zhuque-2E rocket built by the Chinese company LandSpace.
Clark pointed out that LandSpace had launched a rocket on September 15 to release ten satellites for Qianfan, a large, commercial Chinese broadband internet megaconstellation meant to rival SpaceX’s Starlink fleet. According to Clark, the rocket blasted off from northwestern China, headed south over Antarctica, then flew north over the Americas. After deploying its satellites, the rocket re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and broke apart as it fell back toward the ground.
Clark notes that the Zhuque-2E rocket’s upper stage—the part that continues into space after the lower section separates after launch—measures 11 feet in diameter, the same size as the mysterious object discovered in Minnesota. LandSpace, however, has not publicly acknowledged the debris from that launch. Three space experts consulted by the Minnesota Star Tribune agreed that the debris likely came from the Chinese rocket: John Sinko, a physicist at St.
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