A heavy piece of metal that crashed down through the roof of a house in Florida is, in fact, space junk, Nasa confirmed.
The federal space agency said a cylinder plate that tore through a Naples, Florida, home last month was debris from a cargo pallet released from the International Space Station in 2021. according to a Nasa blog post.
The determination was made after the agency cleared the debris of the Florida home and analyze it at the Kennedy Space Center.
“Based on the investigation, the agency determined that the debris was a stand of the Nasa flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet,” the agency said.
The pallet, which contained aging nickel hydride batteries, was released after new lithium ion batteries were installed in the space station.
The debris was supposed to be destroyed in the Earth’s atmosphere. Instead, a piece of metal crashed through a house in Florida, NBC News reports.
The debris weighs 1.6 pounds and measures approximately 4 inches by 1.6 inches.
Homeowner Alejandro Otero has the experience WINK Newswho first reported the story.
“It was a tremendous sound. It almost hit my son. He was two rooms over and heard it all,” Otero tells WINK.
“Something ripped through the house and then made a big hole on the floor and on the ceiling.”
The scientific journal Ars Technica previously speculated that the metal was probably space station debris. Nasa finally confirmed the origin of the piece on Monday.
The space agency added that it will investigate how the debris managed to survive its re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere and “update modeling and analysis”.
It is unclear whether Nasa will cover the cost of damage to Otero’s home.
In comments posted to X shortly after the incident, Otero said that Nasa did not respond messages he left with the agency.
