NASA has confirmed that an object that fell on a Florida home last month was part of a battery pack ejected from the International Space Station.
This extraordinary event breaks new ground in space law. NASA, homeowners and lawyers are considering little-used statutes and intergovernmental agreements to determine who should pay for damages.
Alejandro Otero, the Naples, Fla., owner who was hit by the debris, told Ars that he was pretty sure the object came from the space station, even before NASA’s confirmation. Ta. Circumstances strongly suggested that was the case. The cylindrical piece of metal was discovered on March 8, several days after the U.S. Space Force reported that a space station cargo pallet and nine spent batteries re-entered the space station over the Gulf of Mexico on orbit heading for the coast of southwest Florida. Minutes later, Otello broke through the roof. .
NASA confirmed its origin on Monday after recovering the object from Otero. The agency said in a statement that the object was made of the metal alloy Inconel, weighed 1.6 pounds, was 4 inches tall and 1.6 inches in diameter.
“As part of the analysis, NASA completed an evaluation of the object’s dimensions and characteristics compared to publicly available hardware and conducted a materials analysis,” the agency said. “Based on the investigation, the agency determined that the debris was a NASA flight support equipment strut that was used to attach batteries to a cargo pallet.”
shock from the sky
Otero was out of the country when his home was targeted, but his 19-year-old son was at home. Otero said in an interview Tuesday that the impact sounded like fireworks going off. Otero’s nest camera recorded the noise.
Otero said his son was “sitting in front of his computer, listening to music in his earphones, doing his homework when he heard a very loud bang and jumped out of his chair.”
After returning home and surveying the damage, Otero filed a police report and helped first responders pull the object from under the floorboards between the first and second floors of his home. The droplets penetrated the roof and ceiling of an unoccupied second-floor bedroom, hit the floor between the bed and the bathroom, and hit part of the air conditioning duct. Otero said the impact was so strong that it created a ridge in the first-floor ceiling, but did not penetrate it.
Something of the same size and mass as this battery support column would likely have hit the house with a terminal velocity of over 200 miles per hour. At that speed, the outcome could have been fatal.
“Luckily no one was hurt,” Otero said.
Otello takes one look at the object and realizes that it probably came from outer space. “This is a very dense, very strong alloy and a very interesting metal,” he said. “When I saw it half-charred and shaped like a concave cylinder as it passed through the atmosphere, I knew it had to come from space.
“I knew it was man-made,” Otero continued. “I didn’t know where it came from until I started Googling it.”
Otello said he had found it. Ars’ original article on the March 8 atmospheric reentry, with posts about events at X. It was then that he contacted local news outlets. WINK News, a CBS affiliate in southwest Florida, first reported the damage to Otero’s home. After Otero made several attempts to contact NASA officials, a lawyer from Kennedy Space Center called to talk. NASA then sent someone to retrieve the object from Naples.
