Have you ever been sitting in your home, minding your own business when suddenly a two-pound hunk of junk from the heavens smashed through the ceiling? No? Me neither. But that’s exactly what happened to Florida native Alejandro Otero last month.
The Naples, Florida, resident had their peace of mind and roof shattered when a piece of space debris plummeted all the way to the ground floor of their two-story house, reports Wired. The space trash is suspected to have originated from the International Space Station, which is rapidly reaching the end of its life.
Otero was out of the house when the two-pound lump fell through his home, but the collision was captured on a Nest home security camera. The sound of the crash was heard at 2:34 pm EST on March 8, which lines up nicely with the 2:29 pm EST time that the U.S. Space Command recorded the reentry of a piece of space debris from the space station. Wired reports:
This space junk consisted of depleted batteries from the ISS, attached to a cargo pallet that was originally supposed to come back to Earth in a controlled manner. But a series of delays meant this cargo pallet missed its ride back to Earth, so NASA jettisoned the batteries from the space station in 2021 to head for an unguided reentry.
The fallen space junk has now been whisked off to a NASA lab for analysis, reports Ars Technica. According to the site, Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center will work to “determine its origin” with more information set to come to light “once the analysis is complete.”
But while Nasa waits to see where the trash came from, Otero is waiting to see who will pay for the repairs needed on his home. Otero took to Twitter X to say:
Hello. Looks like one of those pieces missed Ft Myers and landed in my house in Naples.
Tore through the roof and went thru 2 floors. Almost hit my son.
Can you please assist with getting NASA to connect with me? I’ve left messages and emails without a response.
If it turns out that the hunk of junk was from NASA , Ars Technica explains that Otero or his insurance company could “make a claim against the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act.”
Additionally, I’d be interested in knowing who gets to keep the space trash if it falls onto your property. That’s a topic we dived head first into a few years back, and the answer all depends on whether it was thrown away on purpose or lost to the ether.