Alejandro Otero of Naples, Florida, wrote on Platform X last month that a metal object “tore off the roof and passed through two floors” of his home, which hit his son on March 8.
It occurred at a time and place that closely matches official expectations for a 2021 burnout of a portion of the spacecraft carrying old batteries discarded from the orbiting station, which space watchers say is related to the incident in Florida.
After retrieving the body from Otero for study, NASA confirmed in a new blog post that the predictions were correct in this context.
“Based on the testing, the agency concluded that the debris was the support of NASA's flight support equipment used to load batteries onto the charging platform,” he said.
He added: “The body is made of Inconel alloy, weighs 1.6 pounds (0.7 kilograms), is 4 inches (10 centimeters) tall and 1.6 inches in diameter.”
The US space agency has pledged to study how debris escapes complete destruction in the atmosphere, saying it will update its engineering models accordingly.
He continued: “NASA remains committed to operating responsibly in low-Earth orbit and minimizing risks as much as possible to protect people on Earth when space vehicles are launched.”
In a report published last month by the specialist website “Ars Technica”, although the batteries are owned by NASA, they are attached to a pallet structure launched by the Japanese space agency, which could complicate liability claims.
Previous examples of space debris hitting Earth include a piece of the SpaceX Dragon capsule that landed on an Australian sheep farm in 2022. Skylab, the first American space station, also landed in Western Australia.
Recently, China was criticized by NASA for allowing its giant Long March rocket to land on Earth after orbiting Earth.
