“It was a bit surprising to me that so much of the trunk survived the heating process of re-entry,” Dr. McDowell, an astrophysicist, said. But he added that there was no indication that there was anything particularly risky about the object. He did admit that SpaceX wasn’t very open about their risk assessments. With more information, “we could have a better assessment of, ‘Did we just get really unlucky, or should we expect this from all the trunk re-entries if they happen over land?’”, McDowell claimed.