NASA has confirmed that the object which fell into a house in Florida last month was part of a battery released by the International Space Station.
This extraordinary incident opens a new frontier in space law. NASA, the owner and lawyers are combing through little-used legal codes and intergovernmental agreements to determine who should pay for damages.
Alejandro Otero, owner of the debris-hit home in Naples, Florida, told Ars he was fairly certain the object came from the space station, even before NASA’s confirmation. The circumstances strongly suggested that this was the case. The cylindrical piece of metal tore through Otero’s roof on March 8, minutes after U.S. Space Command reported the reentry of a space station cargo pallet and nine decommissioned batteries over the Gulf of Mexico on a trajectory heading towards the southwest coast of Florida. .
On Monday, NASA confirmed the origin of the object after recovering it from Otero. The agency released a statement saying the object is made of Inconel metal alloy, weighs 1.6 pounds and measures 4 inches in height and 1.6 inches in diameter.
“As part of the analysis, NASA conducted an assessment of the dimensions and characteristics of the object compared to published material and performed a materials analysis,” the agency said. “Based on the examination, the agency determined that the debris was media from NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet.”
A shock from the sky
Otero was overseas when his home came in the crosshairs, but his 19-year-old son was at home. The impact looked like fireworks, Otero said in an interview Tuesday. A recording from Otero’s Nest camera captured the noise.
The son “was sitting at his computer doing homework with his headphones on and listening to music, and he was shaken out of his chair with a very loud sound,” Otero said.
After seeing the damage when he returned home, Otero filed a police report and first responders helped remove the object from the subfloor between the first and second floors of his home. It penetrated the roof and ceiling of an unoccupied bedroom on the second floor, struck the floor between the bed and a bathroom and struck an air conditioning duct. It hit so hard that it created a dent in the first-floor ceiling but did not penetrate, according to Otero.
Something the size and mass of this battery support post would likely have hit the house with a terminal velocity of over 200 mph. At this speed, the consequences could have been fatal.
“Luckily no one was hurt,” Otero said.
A quick glance at the object told Otero that it probably came from space. “It’s a super dense alloy, very strong, a very interesting metal,” he said. “When I saw that it was half charred and had a cylindrical shape that had taken on a concave shape as it traveled through the atmosphere, I knew it must have come from space.
“I knew it was man-made,” Otero continued. “I just didn’t know where it came from until I started Googling.”
Otero said he found Original article from Ars on the start of the school year on March 8, as well as articles about the event on X. That’s when he contacted a local media outlet. WINK News, the CBS affiliate for Southwest Florida, was first to report the damage to Otero’s home. After Otero repeatedly tried to contact NASA officials, a lawyer for the Kennedy Space Center called him to hear his story. NASA then dispatched someone to retrieve the object in Naples.
