A mysterious metallic ring with a radiant glow plummeted to the ground, leaving everyone puzzled about its origin and purpose.

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A glimpse of the metal ring, approximately 8 feet in diameter, that descended from the sky into Mukuku village on December 30 in the eastern region of Makueni County, Kenya.

Over a week has passed since initial reports surfaced regarding a "luminescent metal ring" that descended from the sky and landed close to a secluded village in Kenya.

According to the Kenya Space Agency, the object weighed 1,100 pounds (500 kg) and had a diameter of more than 8 feet (2.4 meters) when measured after it landed on December 30. A couple of days later, the space agency confidently reported that the object was a piece of space debris, saying it was a ring that separated from a rocket. "Such objects are usually designed to burn up as they re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere or to fall over unoccupied areas, such as the oceans," the space agency told The New York Times.

Following the release of the initial reports in Western media, a group of committed space enthusiasts has been leveraging open source information to pinpoint the exact space object that landed in Kenya. As of now, they have yet to determine the specific rocket launch associated with the large ring.

Currently, certain space observers suspect that the object might not have originated from outer space at all.

Did it actually originate from outer space?

The space environment is becoming more congested; however, significant pieces of metal from rockets are typically not drifting unnoticed and unmonitored in Earth's orbit.

"It was suggested that the ring is space debris, but the evidence is marginal," wrote Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. McDowell is highly regarded for his analysis of space objects. "The most likely space-related possibility is the reentry of the SYLDA adapter from the Ariane V184 flight, object 33155. Nevertheless, I am not fully convinced that the ring is space debris at all," he wrote.

Another prominent space tracker, Marco Langbroek, believes it's plausible that the ring came from space, so he investigated further into objects that may have returned around the time of the object's discovery in Kenya. In a blog post written Wednesday he noted that apart from the metal ring, other fragments looking consistent with space debris—including material that looks like carbon wrap and isolation foil—were found several kilometers away from the ring.