A crab fisherman made an unusual catch over the weekend when he hauled up a silver sphere in his pot on the Queensland coast – and was promptly told by police to dump it. Within hours, five more identical metal balls had been found strewn across Forrest Beach, a quiet community of around 2,500 people ten miles southeast of Ingham, prompting a hazmat response and a 50-metre exclusion zone.
Local resident Trevor Kyle initially shrugged the object off as a buoy, but his concern grew as he saw officers flood the shore. “You could see that it was getting bigger and bigger and there were questions of the bomb squad being involved, SES maybe, firies (fire services), ambo (ambulance),” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“Six metal spheres that washed up on a Queensland beach are likely hydrazine tanks from a rocket, experts say.”
On Monday, the Australian Space Agency (ASA) said it had identified the likely source of the spheres: pressure vessels from a space launch vehicle that recently re-entered the atmosphere from orbit. “The objects’ location and characteristics are consistent with debris from a foreign rocket body,” the agency said in a statement. It is working with international authorities to formally confirm the launch vehicle.
The six spheres, which crews in protective suits placed into hazmat barrels under police guard, are thought to contain residual hydrazine – a highly volatile propellant. Don Pollacco, professor of astrophysics at the University of Warwick, said they are “clearly the hydrazine tanks from a launch vehicle”. Hydrazine, he explained, “is a particularly nasty chemical” used as a liquid propellant since the 1950s. “The Queensland tanks clearly landed at sea and then were washed up on the beach,” he added, noting that the likely origin is Indian or Chinese.
Forrest Beach Takeaway owner Lisa Scobie said the community was curious. “It’s very quiet, not a lot happens here. So having a lot of extra activity… that definitely created a little bit of excitement,” she told public broadcaster ABC.
The find is not unprecedented. In 2023, India confirmed that a giant metal dome that washed up on a Western Australian beach came from one of its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles. A SpaceX Dragon trunk was found in New South Wales in 2022, and fragments from the Skylab space station landed in Western Australia in 1979. A similar spherical object was discovered in Namibia in 2011, believed to be a hydrazine tank from an unmanned rocket. With roughly 15,800 tonnes of old satellites and rocket scraps now in orbit, the Australian Space Agency advises anyone finding suspected debris to notify authorities and not touch it. “If you come across any suspicious objects in the area, do not touch them. Move away and call Triple Zero immediately,” Queensland’s fire department said.