Chinese Rocket Debris Found in Minnesota Cornfield, Likely From Zhuque-2E

A farmer harvesting corn in Scott Township, Minnesota, found a scorched metal object about 11 feet across lying in his field on Oct. 14, 2026, and the evidence points to a Chinese rocket. The rocket debris in Minnesota most likely came from the upper stage of a LandSpace Zhuque-2E that launched on Sept. 15 and fell back to Earth the same day, according to an analysis by Ars Technica.

Image: A combine and grain cart harvesting corn, used for illustration. This is not the Stevens County field. Photo: Wikideas1, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

What was found in the Stevens County cornfield

The Stevens County Sheriff’s Office said it got a call around 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 14, reporting foreign debris in a field in Scott Township, a rural community in west-central Minnesota. The farmer had come across it while combining the field for the fall harvest.

“Upon responding, deputies confirmed that a large, metallic object, approximately 11-feet in diameter, presumably a space object, was present in the cornfield,” the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook. The office said it was working with several state and federal agencies to identify and notify the owner and to plan the object’s removal. The Minnesota Duty Officer was notified, Gray News reported.

Officials said the object posed no danger to the public.

Why experts point to the Zhuque-2E rocket

On Sept. 15, a Zhuque-2E rocket built by the Chinese company LandSpace launched from Dongfeng, a commercial launch zone that shares space with the military-run Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. It carried 10 satellites for China’s Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, internet constellation, a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink.

Ars Technica’s Stephen Clark laid out the case for a match:

• The path: The rocket flew south from China, over Antarctica and then north over the Americas. Social media posts that night showed streaks of fiery debris heading north over Kansas toward Minnesota, and the display was also visible on the western horizon from Wisconsin.
• The timing: The flight lasted between 75 and 80 minutes and came down without finishing a full orbit. The time, place and direction of the debris fit the launch, which had taken place less than two hours earlier.
• The size: The Zhuque-2E upper stage is 3.35 meters, or about 11 feet, in diameter, the same width as the object in the cornfield.

Officials had not formally confirmed who owns the object as of the latest reports, and LandSpace had not publicly acknowledged the debris.

A deorbit burn that may have gone wrong

After releasing its satellites into a polar orbit about 560 miles (900 kilometers) up, the rocket’s upper stage fired its engine to slow down and drop out of orbit. Bringing spent stages down on purpose is normally a responsible practice, because it keeps them from becoming long-lived space junk.

The catch is where they come down. Rocket stages are usually steered to fall over open ocean. Ars Technica reported that a reentry over the U.S. Midwest suggests the Sept. 15 disposal burn may have been botched, though the cause has not been confirmed.

It is not the rocket’s first debris problem. The upper stage from the Zhuque-2E’s previous flight in June broke apart after its mission, scattering dozens of pieces in a busy part of low Earth orbit. Because that breakup happened at a fairly low altitude, most of those fragments were expected to fall back within a few months.

Who is responsible for falling space junk?

Under international law, the country that launches an object into space is liable for damage it causes on the ground. No one has ever been seriously injured by falling space debris, Ars Technica noted, though there have been a few cases of property damage.

What makes the Minnesota case unusual is the size of the piece, which is larger than most objects that survive reentry, and the fact that it apparently fell from a rocket on its launch day. Ars Technica noted that the outcome might have been different had the stage come down over a more populated area.

China’s satellite push means more launches like this one. China has launched 258 Qianfan satellites since 2024 toward an initial network of 1,296, with longer-term plans for more than 15,000, according to Ars Technica.

The Boston Report has been following the business and security side of space, including SpaceX’s Starship Flight 14 and the first Starlink V3 satellites and Elon Musk’s comments on U.S. control of Starshield limits in Ukraine.

Sources

• Ars Technica: A Chinese rocket deorbited over Minnesota and left this in a farmer’s cornfield
• MPR News: Space debris possibly found in Stevens County, Minnesota cornfield
• Gray News via KBTX: ‘Presumably a space object’: 11-foot metallic object found in Minnesota cornfield
• Wikimedia Commons: Corn combine harvest with grain cart (CC0)