Thank you to Rosely Gregio for reporting the object found in Brazil: > A sphere covered by a material similar to inoxidable steel, > measuring diameter about 80 centimeters and of approximately > a height meter, dropped in one rural property of ... of Belém > (PARÁ). The proprietor of the farm found the object last week. > ... The foil of identification of the object indicates that > him it should be of North American origin. More and images: > > http://noticias.terra.com.br/brasil/interna/0,,OI1113465-EI306,00.html One of the images shows a very legible identification tag: http://img.terra.com.br/i/2006/08/30/389719-5241-ga.jpg The tag reads: GE ASTRO SPACE PART NO. 20004298P1 GE ASTRO SPACE SERIAL NO. 002 MFD BY TRW PRESSURE SYSTEMS, INC MFR PART NO. 80352-101 MFR SERIAL NO. 0002 Does anyone on SeeSat-L have catalogs of TRW and/or GE parts? It seems interesting that both serial numbers indicate that this is only the second object of the series. Here's another image that shows some sort of catastrophic damage to the sphere. http://img.terra.com.br/i/2006/08/30/389717-7378-ga.jpg As Rosely mentioned, the article says that the object was found last week, but it's not clear to me that there was a claim as to how long it may have been there before it was found. It certainly looks to me like it's possible that this object may be a significant remnant of something that was in orbit. Ed Cannon - Austin, Texas, USA __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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