Space experts claim that they have identified the hairy UFO which was discovered by a groundskeeper and his coworker at a luxury campsite in North Carolina.
A Strange Space Debris
On May 24, Justin Clontz and a colleague were doing grounds maintenance at a luxury campsite when they made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. A massive unidentified flying object (UFO) crash landed at Glamping Collective in Haywood County, where they work.
The strange object found on a secluded trail near Canton is complete with heavy-duty metal and mysterious fur. This made Clontz believe that they had just had an extraordinary encounter with extraterrestrial beings.
The object is made of robust metal plates bolted together and measures three feet (91 centimeters) wide. In the photos that Clontz took, it appears to be a burnt carbon fiber panel with strange bits of fur attached to its edges.
According to Clontz, the UFO descended through a gap in the trees without igniting a fire. The object was so massive and heavy that he had to tow it out of the area with a riding lawnmower. Surprisingly, nobody even heard of the crash despite its size and weight.
The groundskeeper told the local news that he was shocked when he made the eerie discovery. He considers it as a once-in-a-lifetime moment that does not normally happen on a daily basis.
Truth Behind the Hairy UFO
According to scientists, the mangled metal is likely fragments of a storage trunk from one of SpaceX's reusable Cargo Dragon spacecraft. Smithsonian astrophysicist Dr. Jonathan McDowell noted that the debris matches the expected site of the probe's reentry. The burnt black metal object also resembles two pieces of debris found in Australia and Canada, which are known to be from SpaceX Dragons.
The trunk of SpaceX'a Dragon has a storage space of more than 350 cubic-feet (9.9 cubic meters) internally. It also has an extended option to expand the capacity to more than 1200 cubic feet (33.98 cubic meters) to accommodate a variety of sensitive payloads.
The cargo container also includes mounted radiators made of electrical and fluid connections. These were designed to aid in regulating the temperature of sensitive components, such as small satellites which can be released in orbit.
This fragment of SpaceX dropped safely about half-mile down a remote trail on Glamping Collective's property. In recent years, however, both governmental and private space programs have become dangerously neglectful of their space junk, according to Dr. McDowell.
Elon Musk's company has not yet confirmed whether the debris found in Canada or the panel discovered in North Carolina were really fragments from their spacecraft. However, ground tracking of the SpaceX Dragon trunk, which made a re-entry in February, indicates that both of these debris came from the trunk as it burned up from friction on its way back to Earth.
McDowell reported that the areas most likely to be affected by debris from such descent may include US states from Tennessee through Virginia. On the other hand, North Carolina is still within the realm of possibility.
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