A 15-foot-long, 4-foot-diameter metal cylinder fell out of the sky in northern Myanmar yesterday, shaking the ground when it crashed. "Every local thought it was the explosion of heavy artillery," local Ko Maung Myo told Myanmar Times. "I walked over to it and saw it was part of an engine."

The cylinder struck in a jade mine and then bounced about 150 feet away before coming to a rest. A smaller cylindrical object, some 4.6 inches in length, crashed through the roof of a nearby home. No injuries have been reported from either incident.

"I think it was an engine because I found a diode and many copper wires at the tail of the body," said Myo, who went on to say that there was an acrid smell around the cylinder, as though electronics were burning.

Global New Light of Myanmar/Facebook

The debris is thought to be from a Chinese Long March 11 rocket that was launched on Wednesday, carrying an experimental satellite. Rocket stages are designed to break off and fall back to Earth before the primary payload reaches space, but launches are generally directed so any part of the vehicle that breaks off will fall into the ocean or another unpopulated area.

The China National Space Administration, however, has a history of not being so cautious when it comes to conducting launches. Last year, part of a rocket engine crashed through a man's roof and into his living room in China's northeastern province of Shanxi. China also recently confirmed that its Tiangong-1 space station is falling back to Earth and is expected to impact in late 2017.

China has been aggressively expanding their space program of late. A second Chinese space station was launched in September, and the country has plans to send a rover to Mars in 2020 and put a person on the moon by 2036.

Source: Myanmar Times via Gizmodo

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io