It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s space junk? NASA confirmed that an object that crashed through the roof of a Florida home was trash that came from the International Space Station.
A cylindrical object crashed through Alejandro Otero’s roof in Naples, Florida, on March 8, 2023. The homeowner’s Ring camera managed to record the sound of the crash, which happened to be an object that fell from space.
The object was taken by NASA to be examined, and they confirmed it was indeed the remains of a 5,800-pound cargo pallet of depleted nickel hydride batteries that was jettisoned from the ISS in March 2021.
“The hardware was expected to fully burn up during entry through Earth’s atmosphere on March 8, 2024,” NASA said in a statement. “However, a piece of hardware survived re-entry and impacted a home in Naples, Florida.”
The piece of debris was around 1.6 pounds and measured about four inches long. It was identified as “a stanchion from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet,” NASA said.
According to NASA, the International Space Station will conduct an investigation to “determine the cause of the debris survival and to update modeling and analysis, as needed.”
Source: https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2024/04/15/nasa-completes-analysis-of-recovered-space-object/