Police continue to guard the strange item that washed up on a remote beach in WA, as authorities launch an investigation into the unidentified floating object.
The mystery cylinder was first discovered on a beach near Green Head in the Mid West on Saturday.
Police are liaising with Federal authorities, including the Australian Defence Force to discover its origins. However, Redditors reckoned they’d solved the mystery ages ago.
In a post to r/space user General_Armadillo_72 posted a photo of the object with the caption: Found on a beach in Western Australia. r/whatisthisthing helped ID it as space material. Can anyone help determining what kind of launch system?
“This is the third stage of India’s PSLV rocket,” Fizrock replied with a side by side comparison of the images.
India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is an expendable vehicle designed to carry a payload from the Earth’s surface to space.
The country launched their first rocket in 1993 and the last was in April 2023.
The Reddit community got even deeper into the weeds and reckoned they pinpointed exactly what launch the rocket was from.
“If it floated for years, who knows where it ended up, but yeah, there was at least one launch that dropped the third stage in the Indian Ocean fairly close to Australia,” Fizrock added.
It’s yet to be proven if the theories are right, but Australian National University astrophysicist Dr Brad Tucker told The West it was possible the metal object was space junk.
The Australian Space Agency said it was contacting other international agencies in a bid to identify the device.
“The object could be from a foreign space launch vehicle and we are liaising with global counterparts who may be able to provide more information,” it said in a tweet.