Saskatchewan farmer shocked to find space debris in his field

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Barry Sawchuk doesn’t usually care about space or the final frontier.

The 66-year-old Saskatchewan farmer focuses much more on seeding.

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But when he found a giant piece of debris in his fields, Sawchuk said he was shocked to learn it was likely part of a rocket.

“It’s not every day you go into your field and find space debris,” Sawchuk said with a laugh in an interview from the front seat of his tractor.

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Sawchuk, who farms with his three sons near Ituna, northeast of Regina, was checking the moisture in his fields in late April when he spotted the object.

As he got closer, he became confused.

It looked like a burnt piece of carbon fiber with aluminum honeycombs in between, he said. There also appeared to be a hydraulic ram in the debris.

It was unlike anything his family had ever seen on their property before.

“We knew he was coming from the sky, because he couldn’t get there on his own,” Sawchuk said.

He said one of his sons did some research and thought it must be space debris.

The family thought it was a fun topic of conversation. They interviewed a local newspaper about the discovery and its possible connections to infinity and beyond.

Photos of the discovery were sent to Samantha Lawler, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Regina.

“It’s definitely space junk,” Lawler said.

Lawler sent the photos and information about where they were found to his colleague Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard who tracks space launches.

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By reviewing the data, he determined that the farmer’s discovery was likely linked to a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft returning to Earth in February with four passengers from the International Space Station.

McDowell posted on social media that the spacecraft’s trunk section’s re-entry trajectory passed within a few miles of where the large object was found on the ground.

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.

Canada’s Transportation and Safety Board confirmed there were no reports of aircraft that could explain the object.

Lawler said the SpaceX Dragon is a capsule used to send people to the space station. Its trunk, an unpressurized cargo space, is attached to the capsule and provides power during flight and while on station. The trunk is ejected before the ship enters the atmosphere, where it is expected to burn up.

But it’s not always the case.

Pieces of debris were discovered on farmland in Australia in 2022. The Australian Space Agency then confirmed that it was a SpaceX mission.

Objects suspected of being similar space debris had also been discovered on a farm in Washington state the previous year.

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Lawler said she believes more trash will land around the world as private companies ramp up their operations in space. Each rocket, whether carrying people or satellites, contains different materials left in orbit.

SpaceX alone has a constellation of more than 5,000 satellites.

Lawler said tracking waste in space is hit or miss. She studies the dramatic increase in the number of satellites and its effects on astronomy and atmospheric chemistry.

“I’ve been yelling about this for five years, and here comes a piece of trash an hour from my house,” Lawler said.

“It’s crazy. This literally hits close to home.

Back at Sawchuk’s farm, little has changed. Farmers’ eyes no longer turn to the sky as before.

“We grow grain,” he said. “This is what we do.”

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