A small cylindrical tube weighing almost 1 kilogram that crashed last March into a house in the city of Naples (Florida) was probably garbage from the International Space Station (ISS).
Although the origin of the object has not yet been confirmed, the owner of the home, Alejandro Otero, believes that the object that fell on the roof of his house and passed through it probably corresponds to one of the nine spent batteries discarded from the ISS.
“Looks like one of those pieces bypassed Ft Myers and landed at my house in Naples,” Otero wrote on X in response to a post describing the discarded rig. “He broke the roof and went through two floors. He almost hit my son,” he said.
Otero handed over the debris to NASA officials, who will analyze the object at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida “as soon as possible to determine its origin,” NASA spokesman Joshua Finch told Live Science.
On the same day that the incident occurred, on March 8, a large loading platform carrying the batteries and belonging to the Japanese space agency JAXA re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Gulf of Mexico, where Naples is located. , in southwest Florida.
Debris discarded from the space station in 2021 was expected to burn up in the atmosphere, but “at least one piece may have survived re-entry,” the Space.com website reported this Thursday.
Once NASA engineers identify the origin of the object, Otero will seek to file a claim against the federal government to pay for the repair of his house, although this process could be complex considering that the material comes from JAXA.
