An object that landed on the roof of an American man’s house is debris from the international space station, Nasa has confirmed.
Alejandro Otero in Naples, Florida, said in a post on X in March that a metal object fell through two stories from his roof and almost hit his son.
The time and location of the incident aligns with official predictions for the atmospheric burn-up of a piece of a cargo pallet with old batteries that was thrown into space from the space station in 2021.
Nasa, which sent the object for analysis, confirmed in a blog entry that the predictions were true.
“Based on the investigation, the agency determined that the debris is a prop from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet,” the post read.
The object weighs about 0.7 kg, is 10 cm high and about 4 cm in diameter.
Nasa has confirmed that it will investigate why the fragments were not completely destroyed in space. He will also adjust his engineering models accordingly.
“Nasa remains committed to operating responsibly in low Earth orbit and to minimize risks as much as possible to protect people on Earth when space debris must be released.”
A report by the specialist news channel Ars Technica, published last month, states that although Nasa owns the battery, it is attached to a pallet structure launched by Japan’s space agency. This potentially complicates any claim for damages.
Previous incidents of man-made space debris hitting Earth include part of a SpaceX Dragon capsule landing on an Australian sheep farm in 2022. Skylab, the US’s first space station, has fallen on Western Australia.
More recently, China has been criticized by Nasa for allowing its giant Long March rockets to fall back to Earth after orbit.
