Cyprusauction-NASA: Space junk that crashed through Florida home came from ISS, 'survived re-entry'

2025-04-30 14:32:13source:Indexbit Exchangecategory:Contact

NASA has confirmed that the nearly 2-pound chunk of a jettisoned pallet of used batteries that crashed through the roof and Cyprusauctiontwo floors of a Florida man's house last month came from the International Space Station.

The space administration said in a blog post Monday that in March 2021, ground controllers used the International Space Station's robotic arm to "release a cargo pallet containing aging nickel hydride batteries from the space station following the delivery and installation of new lithium-ion batteries as part of power upgrades on the orbital outpost." The total mass of the hardware released from the space station was about 5,800 pounds, NASA said.

According to NASA, the hardware was expected to "fully burn up during entry through Earth's atmosphere on March 8, 2024." However, a piece of the hardware "survived re-entry" and crashed through a home in Naples, Florida.

Waste in space:Why junk in Earth orbit is becoming a huge problem

Nest cam shows object crash through Florida home

Alejandro Otero wasn't in his Naples home on March 8, although he said his son was two rooms away from the impact. The crash, which could be heard at 2:34 p.m. in his Nest home security camera footage, coincides with the time the U.S. Space Command noted the entry of some space debris from the ISS, Ars Technica reported.

“Something ripped through the house and then made a big hole on the floor and on the ceiling,” Otero told WINK News, which broke the story. “When we heard that, we were like, impossible, and then immediately I thought a meteorite.”

NASA is analyzing re-entry

NASA said it worked with the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to collect the item and, after analyzing it, determined the debris to be "stanchion from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet."

The object is made of the metal alloy Inconel, according to NASA, and weighs 1.6 pounds. It is 4 inches tall and measures 1.6 inches in diameter.

"The International Space Station will perform a detailed investigation of the jettison and re-entry analysis to determine the cause of the debris survival and to update modeling and analysis, as needed," NASA said in the blog post.

Contributing: C.A. Bridges, USA TODAY Network-Florida

Gabe Hauari is a national trending news reporter at USA TODAY. You can follow him on X @GabeHauari or email him at [email protected].

More:Contact

Recommend

Man charged with rape after kidnapping 3 teen girls at gunpoint along Nashville street

A man police say kidnapped three teenage girls and sexual assaulted two of them at gunpoint outside

Virginia school bus driver and 12 children hurt after bus overturns, officials say

SUFFOLK, Va. (AP) — A bus driver and 12 children were hurt when a school bus headed to a southeaster

Fatal Illinois stabbing of 6-year-old Palestinian refugee alarms feds

As the suspect in the vicious fatal stabbing of a Palestinian refugee boy in Illinois is expected to