A Chinese rocket took off from a remote spaceport in the Gobi Desert about a month ago, released 10 satellites into orbit, then reignited its engine and put itself on a trajectory to rain debris over the American Midwest. Because apparently, littering is now an international affair.

The rocket's flight on September 15 lasted between 75 and 80 minutes - just shy of a full orbit - before coming down in a fiery spectacle that social media users captured as streaks heading north over Kansas toward Minnesota. Wisconsin residents got a view on the western horizon, presumably while wondering if they'd accidentally wandered into a Michael Bay film.

Experts connected the debris to the launch of a Zhuque-2E rocket, a medium-lift vehicle built by Chinese company LandSpace, which had lifted off from Dongfeng - a commercial launch zone co-located with the military-run Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China - less than two hours earlier. The incident was largely forgotten until a farmer in rural Minnesota discovered something unusual while combining his cornfield for the fall harvest: a circular metal object about 11 feet in diameter, sitting amid the corn stalks in Scott Township, west-central Minnesota.

The Stevens County Sheriff's Office received a phone call reporting the discovery on Wednesday. "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 Sheriff's Office is working closely with several state and federal agencies to identify and notify the owner of the debris and to plan for removal from the field." Law enforcement officials said the debris posed no danger to the public - which might not have been true had it reentered over a more populated area. Space junk routinely falls out of orbit, and fragments sometimes survive reentry. No one has ever been seriously injured by falling space junk, but there are a few examples of property damage. Under international law, the country that launched an object into space is liable for any damage it causes on the ground.

What makes this debris unusual is its size - larger than most objects that survive reentry - and the fact that it likely came from a rocket that fell from space the same day it launched. The upper stage of the Zhuque-2E rocket has a diameter of 11 feet (3.35 meters), perfectly matching the object found in Minnesota. The rocket that launched on September 15 deployed 10 satellites for the Qianfan (Thousand Sails) communications network, China's answer to SpaceX's Starlink. China has launched 258 Qianfan satellites since 2024, aiming for an initial constellation of 1,296 satellites, with long-term ambitions of more than 15,000.

The methane-fueled rocket released the 10 satellites into a circular polar orbit at roughly 560 miles (900 kilometers) about half an hour after liftoff. It flew south from China, over Antarctica, then north over the Americas. After deploying its payloads, the upper stage performed a burn to slow its velocity and drop out of orbit - normally a responsible practice to limit new space debris. Chinese rockets have been problematic in this area before, with unguided reentries and in-orbit breakups. US rockets on low-Earth orbit missions usually reserve enough propellant for guided disposal.

The upper stage from the Zhuque-2E's previous flight in June broke apart after completing its mission, leaving dozens of pieces of debris in a heavily trafficked part of low-Earth orbit that's home to the International Space Station and a significant portion of SpaceX's Starlink network. The good news? The rocket's altitude was low enough that most debris would reenter within a few months.

LandSpace has not publicly acknowledged the debris fall over Minnesota. The usual practice is to steer rocket stages toward reentry over the ocean, suggesting the September 15 incident was perhaps the result of a botched deorbit burn - because nothing says "international incident" like a stray rocket part in a cornfield.