Is it a bomb? Is it a plane crash? No, it’s space junk.

An eerie buzzing sound followed by a loud bang startled Kenyan villagers relaxing on a recent afternoon with family and friends.

“It sounded like a bomb, I was shocked. I started looking around, also wondering if it was gunshots,” Stephen Mangoka, a 75-year-old farmer from Mukuku village in Makueni county, told the BBC.

“I looked up at the sky to see if there was smoke. Nothing.

“I ran to the road to check if there had been any accidents. Also, nothing. That’s when someone told me that something had fallen from the sky.”

In fact, a huge round metal object had fallen from above landing on a farmland near a dry river bed, and it was very hot.

“We found a big chunk of metal that was very red, so we had to wait for it to cool before anyone could get close,” said Ann Kanuna, who told us she owns the land where the object landed.

It took about two hours for the giant ring to cool and turn gray, but it had already caused a sensation among the people who came to see it.

The rest of Monday afternoon, with few people working like the day before New Year’s Eve, crowds came to see the giant metal ring.

It was like a selfie hub, with people posing next to it and big debates about what it could be.

Local authorities in Makueni county, located about 115 kilometers (70 miles) southeast of the capital Nairobi, were informed.

The Kenya Space Agency (KSA) then found out and arranged to come investigate the next day.

But such was the fame of the object that the villagers of Mukuku feared it would be stolen overnight.

Together with local officers, some of them took turns standing guard and lit a fire nearby. They wanted to keep away potential scrap dealers and others who wanted to make money through curiosity.

It is said to weigh more than 500 kg (1,102 lb), about the same as an adult horse, and measures around 2.5 m (8 ft) in diameter, about the size of a children’s four-seater merry-go-round.

With daylight more curious onlookers arrived on New Year’s Eve, followed by the KSA team and the media.

Mukuku had never seen such activity. When the KSA took the object away later that day, rumors gave way to concerns about what the villagers had had each other.

The KSA said its preliminary assessments indicated the object was “a separation ring” from a space launch rocket.

“These objects are typically designed to burn when they re-enter Earth’s atmosphere or to fall into unoccupied areas, such as the oceans,” their statement said the next day.

No one was injured when it fell, but some in Mukuku began to complain that the impact had caused damage to nearby houses.

Christine Kionga, who lives about a kilometer from the accident site, showed us the cracks in the concrete of some of the buildings in her home complex. He said they had appeared after the accident.

Other neighbors alleged that the structural integrity of their homes had also been affected, accusations that have not yet been substantiated.

“The government needs to find the owners of this object and get compensation for those affected,” Mukuku resident Benson Mutuku told the BBC.

There were reports in the local media that some residents had begun to complain of feeling unwell after exposure to the metal ring, although there was no confirmation from those we spoke to during our visit, nor from the authorities or the KSA.

However, Mutuku said there were concerns about the long-term effects of possible space radiation.

“This is a space object and we have heard in other similar incidents that there have been radiation effects that affect even future generations and there is that fear in this community.”

However, tests subsequently carried out by the Kenya Nuclear Regulatory Authority revealed that while the metal ring had higher radiation levels than the area in which it was found, they were not harmful to humans.

Engineers from the KSA, which was established in 2017 to promote, coordinate and regulate space-related activities in the East African nation, continue to conduct other tests to learn more about the object.

The KSA director-general said it was fortunate that no significant damage was caused when the object plummeted towards Earth.

“Ultimate responsibility for any damage or injury caused by that space object lies with the state in whose jurisdiction that operator may have launched the object,” Brigadier Hillary Kipkosgey told the BBC.

Under the Outer Space Treaty, overseen by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, “States shall be responsible for damage caused by their space objects.”

“(The ring) is a common element in many rockets and many space objects, so it is difficult to attribute it to a specific rocket or space object, but we have clues, but as I said, our investigations are inconclusive,” said Brigadier Kipkosgey .

The BBC showed images of the object to the United Kingdom Space Agency to obtain the opinion of its experts.

“The most plausible object it could be is the separation ring from the upper stage of an Ariane rocket in 2008,” said its launch director, Matt Archer.

“The satellites are fine, but the rocket body has already left orbit.”

Ariane was Europe’s main rocket launch vehicle and helped put more than 230 satellites into orbit, before being retired in 2023.

It appears that the separation ring may have been orbiting Earth for 16 years before making its unexpected appearance at Mukuku.

This is not the first incident of space debris to appear in East Africa.

A little over a year and a half ago, some suspected space debris fell on several villages in western Uganda.

And a few days ago, on January 8, there were unconfirmed reports of what were believed to be space debris burning brightly in the skies over northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia.

As the space industry grows, these types of incidents are predicted to become more frequent, and African governments may need to invest in ways to better detect this accelerating space debris.

NASA estimates that there are more than 6,000 tons of space debris in orbit right now.

There are many different estimates on the chances of that piece of junk hitting someone, but most are in the range of one in 10,000.

These statistics are of little comfort to the residents of Mukuku, who can’t help but think about the damage the ring could have caused if it had landed in the center of the village instead of on farmland.

“We need assurances from the government that this will not happen again,” Mutuku said.