It’s raining rocket debris. Suspected fragments from Chinese rockets have turned up in places as far apart as Minnesota and Indonesia, raising concerns about the dangers posed by falling space junk.

A farmer in rural Minnesota was working on his cornfield when he discovered a circular metal object approximately 11 feet wide (3 meters wide), according to the Stevens County Sheriff’s Office. The object likely came from a Chinese rocket that launched more than a month earlier and reentered through the atmosphere over Kansas toward Minnesota.

Thousands of miles from Minnesota, a suspected fragment of another Chinese rocket turned up in Indonesia. Local authorities are investigating a car-sized piece of debris that was found in a palm oil plantation near homes and work sites.

China has been known to be careless when it comes to its rocket bits falling from the skies, with numerous incidents reported over the last few years. The two recent cases highlight a growing need to address the safety risks posed by falling rocket debris and hold spacefaring nations accountable for where their discarded hardware comes down.

The object found in Minnesota had likely been lying undiscovered on the field for six weeks. It matches the upper stage of a Zhuque-2E rocket, a medium-lift vehicle built by a Chinese company called LandSpace.

The rocket launched on September 15 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China. It delivered 10 networking satellites into a Sun-synchronous polar orbit before free-falling toward Earth in an uncontrolled reentry.

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