(NewsNation) -- The nearly half-ton charred object that crashed in Australia earlier this month is likely debris from a Chinese rocket that fell back to Earth, experts say.

Officials from the Western Australia Police Force said miners in the Pilbara region reported discovering the blackened, smoldering mass Oct. 18 near a remote access road. The suspected space debris has been described in media reports as being 5 feet wide, weighing 660 pounds and comprised of carbon fiber.

Government officials ruled out commercial aircraft. In the following days, a variety of aerospace experts ventured to guess that the object was part of a man-made spacecraft.

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Marco Langbroek, an aerospace engineering analyst in the Netherlands, said the object appeared to be the type of "composite overwrapped pressure vessel" that holds high-pressure gases and liquids within rockets. He said COPVs typically can survive reentry into the atmosphere.

Langbroek and others speculated the debris came from the upper stage of a solid-fueled Chinese Jielong 3 rocket, which typically are more than 100 feet tall.

Firm answers may never materialize, observers say, because of the secrecy surrounding China's space program.

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