Mystery Object From ‘Space’ Strikes United Airlines Flight Over Utah

National transport The Office of Safety confirmed Sunday that it is investigating an airliner that was struck by an object in its windshield in mid-flight over Utah.

“The NTSB is collecting radar, weather and flight recorder data,” the federal agency said on the social media site X. “The windshield is being sent to NTSB laboratories for examination.”

The strike occurred Thursday, during a United Airlines flight from Denver to Los Angeles. Images shared on social media show one of two large windows at the front of a 737 MAX plane was significantly cracked. Similar footage also reveals a pilot’s arm being cut multiple times by what appears to be small shards of glass.

Origin of item unconfirmed

The captain reportedly described the object that struck the plane as “space debris.” This, however, has not been confirmed.

After impact, the plane landed safely at Salt Lake City International Airport after being diverted.

Footage of the strike showed that an object made a violent impact near the upper right of the window, showing damage to the metal frame. Because the plane’s windows are several layers thick, with laminate in between, the glass did not completely shatter. The plane was flying above 30,000 feet – probably around 36,000 feet – and the cockpit was apparently maintaining cabin pressure.

So, was it space debris? It’s impossible to know without more data. Very few bird species can fly above 30,000 feet. However, the world’s highest flying bird, the Rüppell’s vulture, is found mainly in Africa. An unregulated weather balloon is also a possibility, although it is unclear whether the speed would have been high enough to cause the type of damage observed. Hail is also a potential culprit.

Assuming it wasn’t a Shohei Ohtani home run, the only other potential cause of the damage is an object from space.

That was the pilot’s initial conclusion, but a meteor is more likely than space debris. Estimates vary, but a recent study in the journal Geology found that about 17,000 meteorites hit Earth in a given year. This is at least an order of magnitude greater than the amount of human-made space debris that survives re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.

Careful analysis of the glass and metal impacted by the object should be able to reveal its origin.

This story was originally published on Ars Technica.