This 11-Foot-Wide, Bowl-Shaped Object Was Found in a Minnesota Cornfield. Experts Suspect It's a Stray Rocket Part

The mysterious, shiny object has not been conclusively identified, but it might be space junk from a rocket built by the Chinese company LandSpace and launched on September 15. Metal pieces were also recently found in Borneo, believed to be shed by a different LandSpace rocket

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

October 27, 2026 1:42 p.m.

A large metallic object has turned up in a Minnesota cornfield, raising questions about where it came from and how it got there.

On the afternoon of October 14, sheriff’s deputies responded to a call that “foreign debris” had been found in a cornfield in Scott Township, a rural area in the west-central part of the state about 140 miles from Minneapolis. When they arrived, they found a shiny, bowl-shaped, 11-foot-wide object resting on the ground, according to a Facebook post from the Stevens County Sheriff’s Office.

A farmer had stumbled upon the object while driving a combine—a large vehicle that harvests crops—through the field. Based on the height of the corn underneath, the farmer suspects the metal hunk had been there for about six weeks, reports KARE 11’s Felicity Dachel.

Federal officials responded, and the mysterious object was taken to a secure location.

“There are several various agencies assisting in the determination of [the] origin of this object,” Jason Dingman, the Stevens County Sheriff, told the Minnesota Star Tribune’s Jenny Berg soon after the object was recovered. “We’re not getting fed much information either and what info we do get is pretty cryptic. So, I think somebody way up the food chain above my head knows what this thing is, but they are not even telling us.”

Later, Dingman referred all questions to the U.S. Department of State. A spokesperson for the federal agency tells the Minnesota Star Tribune’s Berg that it is “working with interagency partners to determine the nature and origin of the debris” and that the object had “been secured and poses no danger to the public.”

Resident Tena Wilts got a good look at the object before it was removed. She spotted the mysterious hunk of metal while driving to her parents’ home, which is three miles away from the field. Wilts described it as “very large,” adding that it’s “bizarre that it just kind of landed there in the middle of a field.”

“We had a tornado through the area a few weeks ago, so that came to mind,” she told the Minnesota Star Tribune earlier this month. “You hear about space garbage, too, so that comes to mind.”

Others had their own theories about the mysterious object. On social media, commenters suggested everything from a piece of the Tilt-A-Whirl amusement park ride to the silver saucer sled used by Clark Griswold, played by Chevy Chase, in the 1989 holiday comedy National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

Stephen Clark, a reporter for Ars Technica, proposes that the object was part of a Zhuque-2E rocket built by the Chinese company LandSpace. Clark pointed out that LandSpace had launched a rocket on September 15 to release ten satellites for Qianfan, a large, commercial Chinese broadband internet megaconstellation meant to rival SpaceX’s Starlink fleet.

According to Clark, the rocket blasted off from northwestern China, headed south over Antarctica, then flew north over the Americas. After deploying its satellites, the rocket re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and broke apart as it fell back toward the ground.

Clark notes that the Zhuque-2E rocket’s upper stage—the part that continues into space after the lower section separates after launch—measures 11 feet in diameter, the same size as the mysterious object discovered in Minnesota. LandSpace, however, has not publicly acknowledged the debris from that launch.

Three space experts consulted by the Minnesota Star Tribune agreed that the debris likely came from the Chinese rocket: John Sinko, a physicist at St. Cloud State University; Jessica Heim, a space researcher at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia; and Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who recently retired from the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian.

Rocket operators typically steer discarded parts toward the ocean to keep debris away from populated areas, per Ars Technica. It’s not clear what happened in this case.

Just a few days after the Minnesota incident, authorities in Indonesia said they were investigating space debris at a palm oil plantation in Borneo, reports the New York Times’ Ephrat Livni. That debris, which consisted of large, torn pieces of metal, is also suspected to have come from a LandSpace rocket, one that launched on October 14.

Did you know? Space balls

Earlier this year, six large, shiny spheres washed up on a beach in northeastern Australia, prompting the evacuation of more than 1,000 people. Officials later determined, however, that the balls were probably debris from a rocket and posed no threat to public safety.

Neither incident resulted in injuries. However, as space activity continues to grow, there’s a “growing casualty risk” from fragments that survive atmospheric re-entry, according to the European Space Agency’s latest Space Environment Report, based on 2025 data.

This year, for the first time, the agency added a new metric: the estimated on-ground casualty risk of re-entries. The biggest risk, according to the report, comes from rocket bodies.

Last year, more than 300 rockets put more than 4,000 new payloads into orbit. Each day, about ten new payloads are launched while more than three intact satellites or rocket bodies re-enter Earth’s atmosphere.

“Even though the numbers are low compared to everyday risks in life, the chance of a casualty increased in recent years due to increased traffic,” according to a statement.

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