Barnard Castle-based TV antiques expert David Harper hopes unusual auction lot will rocket in value

The Barnard Castle-based dealer, well known for his appearances on shows such as the BBC's Bargain Hunt and Antiques Road Trip, has come across a strut and other parts from a Chinese rocket used to destroy a rogue satellite in 2007.

Mr Harper said it had been sent to him by a client in Japan.

He joked: “It might look like part of an old Volvo roof rack, but it might just sell for a ballistic amount of money.”

The parts are from part of a Chinese HN3 rocket which, stripped of all its armaments, was fired at a Chinese weather satellite in exceptionally low orbit.

When the rocket hit the satellite, the impact speed was estimated at about 100,000km per hour.

The fragments of the rocket were salvaged under international maritime law from the far north east coast of Hokkaido's Sea of Okhostk, in the western Pacific, in May 2011.

The strut measures 1.3m and weighs just over 3.5kg.

The strut and other parts will be sold at The London Auction Rooms on June 27 as part of an auction featuring antique and modern silver, jewellery, watches and Asian and European works of art.

Quite what the rocket parts could fetch, no-one seems to know, as there is no pre-sale estimate listed in the auction catalogue.

Mr Harper is currently away filming his latest Antiques Road Trip adventure with fellow expert Paul Laidlaw and actresses Thelma Barlow and Anne Reid, best known for their roles in Coronation Street.