Cape Town | Monday
THE United States has asked South Africa to hand over three large pieces of space debris that crashed to Earth outside Cape Town last year, but local scientists want to keep it.
The debris – a pressurisation sphere, a propellant tank and part of the exhaust nozzle of a US Air Force rocket that was launched in 1996 – is currently on display at a museum in Cape Town.
“The onus is on South Africa to arrange to return it,” the Johannesburg-based Sunday Times quoted US official Ken Hodgkins as saying, adding that the United States would cover the costs of the operation.
The US State Department request cited an international treaty, which South Africa has signed, under which it said the debris is US property.
Mike Bruton, director of the MTN Science Centre sponsored by a local mobile telephone company, said the exhibit was popular with both children and adults, and that he would like to enlarge it.
Local astronomer David Laney said South Africa should be allowed to keep the debris, which “fascinates kids”.
“It landed in South Africa, it was salvaged by us and getting to keep it should be our reward,” he said.
But Nick Johnson, manager of the Orbital Debris Programme Office at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NSAA), said the US Defence Department wanted to study why the three objects withstood the intense heat of re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere instead of burning up. – AFP