NASA announced on Tuesday that it is investigating an object that crashed into a Florida man’s home, a potential fragment from the International Space Station.
Alejandro Otero, residing in Naples, Florida, shared on X that the object “penetrated the roof and passed through 2 floors” of his house, narrowly missing his son, on March 8.
Otero suspects it may be a section of a cargo pallet containing aged batteries that NASA ground control crews ejected from the space station in 2021.
According to official forecasts, the object was expected to safely disintegrate upon reentering Earth’s atmosphere on March 8. Otero shared a video clip from his Nest home camera capturing the moment of impact, noting it occurred at 2:34 pm.
Renowned astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell weighed in, stating, “So that’s 1934 UTC, which is very consistent with the Space Force estimate of reentry over the Gulf at 1929 UTC.” He suggested it could indeed be a fragment from the reentry of the EP-9 battery pallet.
Local news outlet winknews.com initially reported the incident on March 15.
“NASA collected an item in cooperation with the homeowner, and will analyze the object at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as soon as possible to determine its origin,” the space agency stated on Tuesday. “More information will be available once the analysis is complete.”
A report by specialist news outlet Ars Technica highlighted that while the batteries were owned by NASA, they were attached to a pallet structure launched by Japan’s space agency, potentially complicating liability claims.
Past examples of manmade human space debris hitting Earth include part of a SpaceX Dragon capsule landing on an Australian sheep farm in 2022. Additionally, Skylab, the United States’ first space station, fell on Western Australia.
More recently, China has faced criticism from NASA for allowing its giant Long March rockets to fall back to Earth after orbit.
