A cut piece of ракета-носитель «Союз» recovered on a Caribbean beach.

On 3 April 2014, at 23:02, Paris time (21:02 UTC), the Soyuz rocket took off from the Guiana Space Centre and embarked the Sentinel-1A Earth observation satellite. After crossing the dense layers of the atmosphere about 130 km above the Earth, in space, the payload fairing that protects the satellite separates from the rest of the rocket. The details of this separation and and putting the Sentinel-1A satellite into orbit are followed by the onboard cameras attached on the Soyuz rocket.

Below, we see in the the separation of the different modules of the rocket and in particular the payload fairing at 2:471.


The payload fairing falls back on Earth, in the Atlantic Ocean and after spending few days adrift , some pieces were washed up on a beach in the Caribbean.

coiffe-soyouz Payload fairing