Naples - Wednesday March 17, 2024: NASA has confirmed that an object that crashed through the roof of a Florida home last month was a piece of space junk from equipment discarded from the International Space Station.
It weighs 1.6 pounds and measures 4 inches in height and roughly 1-and-a-half inches wide. It was subsequently taken to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral for analysis.
On Monday the space agency said it was a mental support used to mount old batteries on a cargo pallet for disposal. The pallet was jettisoned from the space station in 2021, and the load was expected to eventually fully burn up on entry into Earth’s atmosphere, but this piece survived.
The cylindrical object tore through a home in Naples on March 8th. No one was injured. Homeowner Alejandro Otero told WINK TV News that he was on vacation when his son told him what had happened. Otero said the object ripped through his ceiling and torn up the flooring.
“I was shaking. I was completely in disbelief. What are the chances of something landing on my house with such force to cause so much damage,” Otero said. “I’m super grateful that nobody got hurt.”