TWO white-hot hunks of metal which crashed to earth in South Africa last week are debris from a US rocket launched four years ago. The first, weighing around 30 kilograms, landed on a farm near Cape Town on Thursday; the other, estimated to weigh about 100 kilograms on a nearby farm the following day. Nasa chief scientist and orbital debris programme manager Nick Johnson told Radio 702 the two objects are from a Delta rocket which Nasa launched in 1996. He said circumstantial evidence — the timing of their landing and their size — indicate the two objects are ones Nasa had been expecting to land in southern Africa. “Although no one had been hurt by these objects in the last 40 years, the United States government would compensate anyone who is struck by the objects,” Johnson said. This was in terms of a UN convention signed in 1972, he added.