In 2021, the space station dropped a cargo pallet that contained it.
The kid of homeowner Alejandro Otero was fortunate enough to escape injury when a piece of space debris crashed through a roof in Naples, Florida, on March 8. The debris tore through two storeys and fortunately missed him. NASA announced on Tuesday that it has confirmed the findings of its investigation into the incident. A piece of equipment that was jettisoned from the International Space Station (ISS) three years ago is what it appears to be, as was expected.
It was determined during an examination conducted by NASA at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral that the object in question was a piece of the EP-9 support equipment that was utilized to attach batteries onto a cargo pallet. This pallet was dropped by the robotic arm of the International Space Station on March 11, 2021. The haul, which consisted of wasted nickel-hydrogen batteries, was anticipated to orbit the Earth for a period of time ranging from two to four years (it split the difference, lasting almost exactly three years), “before burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere,” as NASA estimated at the time. No, not quite.
The debris that penetrated the roof was understood to be a stanchion from NASA flight support equipment that was utilized for the purpose of mounting the batteries onto the cargo pallet. In addition to having a height of 4 inches and a diameter of 1.6 inches, the object weighs 1.6 pounds and is constructed out of the metal alloy Inconel.
The EP-9 equipment pallet reentered at 1929 UTC over the Gulf of Mexico between Cancun and Cuba. This was witih the previous prediction window but a little to the northeast of the 'most likely' part of the path. A couple minutes later reentry and it would have reached Ft Myers
— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) March 8, 2024
Hello. Looks like one of those pieces missed Ft Myers and landed in my house in Naples.
— Alejandro Otero (@Alejandro0tero) March 15, 2024
Tore through the roof and went thru 2 floors. Almost his my son.
Can you please assist with getting NASA to connect with me? I’ve left messages and emails without a response. pic.twitter.com/Yi29f3EwyV
In an interview with WINK-TV, a CBS affiliate in Fort Meyers, Otero stated that he was on vacation when his son informed him that something had found its way through their roof. “My body was trembling,” he stated. “I was extremely unconvinced by the news. What is the likelihood that something will land on my house with such force that it will inflict such a significant amount of damage? Please accept my sincere gratitude that nobody was wounded.
It has been stated by NASA that it will conduct an investigation of the ejection and re-entry of the equipment dump in order to determine the reason why the object crashed into Otero’s house rather than disintegrating into flames. According to a press release issued by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), “engineering models are utilized by NASA specialists in order to estimate how objects heat up and break apart during atmospheric re-entry.” When debris is discovered to have survived atmospheric re-entry to the ground, these models require detailed input parameters and are continuously updated to reflect the new information.
According to NASA observations, the majority of space trash travels at speeds of up to 18,000 miles per hour. In it, it is stated that “current and future space-based services, explorations, and operations pose a safety risk to people and property in space and on Earth due to the rate of speed and volume of debris in low-Earth orbit.”