NASA has confirmed that an object that crashed into a Florida man’s home was a piece of debris ejected from the International Space Station (ISS). The unusual incident came to light last month when Alejandro Otero of Naples, Florida, shared on social media that a metallic object had pierced through the roof and two floors of his house on March 8, narrowly missing his son.
The timing and location of the event closely aligned with official predictions for the atmospheric burn-up of a cargo pallet fragment carrying old batteries that were ejected from the ISS in 2021. Space watchers deemed it a likely match based on these factors.
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NASA, after collecting the object from Otero for analysis, confirmed in a recent blog post that it was indeed a stanchion from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount batteries on the cargo pallet. The debris, made of the metal alloy Inconel, weighs 1.6 pounds and measures 4 inches in height and 1.6 inches in diameter.
The space agency has pledged to investigate how the debris managed to survive atmospheric entry without being fully destroyed. It intends to update its engineering models accordingly to mitigate such risks in the future.
“NASA remains committed to responsibly operating in low Earth orbit and mitigating as much risk as possible to protect people on Earth when space hardware must be released,” the agency stated.
Past instances of manmade space debris hitting Earth include part of a SpaceX Dragon capsule landing on an Australian sheep farm in 2022 and the fall of Skylab, the United States’ first space station, in Western Australia. China’s handling of its Long March rockets, allowing them to fall back to Earth after orbit, has also drawn criticism from NASA.
