The phones were buzzing at NCFSR (Nailsworth Centre for Space Research) on Saturday morning as a couple of excited Nailsworthians were calling the centre's scientists.

They had found a curious lump of hardware that they thought had fallen from the Mir Space Station, as it made it's final journey back to Earth on Friday. The silver coated item was found in the King George V playing fields. The 'find' was taken into the centre's laboratory for a series of extensive tests to determine if the item was indeed part of Mir.

After eight and three quarter hours of testing, and waiting to see if it 'moved' the verdict was announced by Mr Van Cleef, from the press office. It turned out to be an old Casio calculator which had probably fallen out of somebody's school bag. The mystery as to why it was covered in silver foil is still to be solved, he added.

The image above shows the 'find' with a twenty pence coin to show the scale.