Out of the blue

Keep that stuff up there!

Unidentified falling object in Bayonne mystifies NASA


When a hunk of metal crashed to the floor of a home Tuesday, it set off a mystery that has NASA, NJ Transit and scientists scratching their heads.

The hunk of gray metal fell with a bang into a multifamily home around lunchtime. It was 3 inches by 5 inches with two hexagonal holes. The man who lives in the home was watching television in the next room when he heard the crash and saw a cloud of dust.

Experts who have seen it say it's man made. But nobody can say where it might have come from.

Dan Stessel, a spokesman for NJ Transit, said it isn't something that would have flown off the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail tracks just about 100 feet from the home.

Federal Aviation Administration officials who went to the home to check it out said it was not a part that would have fallen from a plane headed into or out of Newark Liberty International Airport.

"It doesn't look very 'space-y,''' Henry Kline, a spokesman for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told the Star-Ledger of Newark. "It's obviously made for something ... But we wouldn't know what to do with it.''

U.S. Air Force Major Costas Leonidou at the Pentagon, told the newspaper that he couldn't identify the fallen object either. "It could be Air Force, Navy, Marines, commercial. It could be anything,'' he said.

Authorities in Bayonne like the duplex residents just want to know what it might be.

"It belongs to somebody,'' said Bayonne Police Director Mark Smith.

Update 6.00 PM

A hunk of metal that crashed through the roof of a home had NASA and Federal Aviation Administration officials scratching their heads.

It didn't look "very space-y,'' said Henry Kline, a spokesman for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's obviously made for something ... But we wouldn't know what to do with it.''

It didn't appear to be an airplane part either, the FAA said.

Finally, FAA spokesman Jim Peters said Wednesday, a colleague in his office solved the mystery: It was part of a commercial woodchipper. The same part from another woodchipper's grinder had caused similar confusion last year, he said.

How it got on a Bayonne roof was anyone guess, but Peters had a theory. The grinder piece moves very fast and, apparently, it can launch into the air if something goes wrong.

The man who lives in the house was watching television Tuesday when he heard a crash and saw a cloud of dust. In the next room, he found the hunk of gray metal, 3 1/2 inches by 5 inches, with two hexagonal holes in it.

The part was being returned to Bayonne Police on Wednesday, Peters said.

"It belongs to somebody,'' Police Director Mark Smith said.