A man and his son were startled on March 8 when a strange object hurtled through the roof of their Florida home. The object, a few inches long and weighing nearly 2 pounds, crashed through both floors before settling on the home's foundation. Now that the object is in NASA's possession, scientists believe it may have come from the International Space Station (ISS).
Alejandro Otero of Naples, Florida made the connection after seeing an X (formerly Twitter) post by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. McDowell, who recently details satellite and space debris goings-on via X, shared the day of the crash that an equipment pallet had just reentered Earth's atmosphere. Labeled EP-9, the pallet had carried six discarded lithium-ion batteries, which the ISS jettisoned back in March 2021. EP-9's total weight was just under 3 tons.
Tossing trash overboard is typical for the ISS, as debris usually burns up in Earth's atmosphere. But now and then, it just…doesn't.
"Looks like one of those pieces missed Fort Myers and landed in my house in Naples," Otero told McDowell. "Tore through the roof and went through two floors. Almost [hit] my son." The photos attached to Otero's reply showed that the mysterious cylindrical chunk had blasted holes through his roof, ceiling, and wood floor.
McDowell forwarded Otero's photos to the Aerospace Corporation, a California-based nonprofit that operates a federally funded space research center. NASA reached out to Otero to collect the debris, which is now undergoing analysis at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Otero added that he was awaiting further communication from both agencies to "resolve the damages" resulting from EP-9's release.
Otero mentioned in his post that he was eager to see agencies work to eject debris payloads in a way that would guarantee total burn-up upon atmospheric reentry. McDowell agreed.
"There are much larger objects that have been allowed to do uncontrolled reentries," McDowell said, offering China's Chang Zheng 5B core stages as an example. "But the Florida incident reinforces that we should be phasing out [the] permitting of uncontrolled reentries of all but the smallest orbital objects. Say, everything above 1,000 kg."
