In Naples, Florida, an object weighing two kilograms crashed through the roof of Alejandro Otera’s home. Luckily, no one was injured in this strange incident. Initially, Otera thought it was a meteorite that had landed on his house, but upon closer inspection, he realized it was man-made.
NASA quickly confirmed that the object was from a pallet of old nickel-hybrid batteries that had been released from an orbital outpost on the International Space Station in 2021. The agency stated that such objects were expected to burn up completely upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, but in this case, a piece of hardware survived and crashed into Otera’s house.
The object was taken to the Kennedy Space Center for analysis and identified as a piece of support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet. Made of metal alloy Inconel, the object partially melted but largely survived the high-speed impact.
NASA announced that they would conduct a detailed investigation into the ejection and re-entry process to understand how the debris was able to survive the burn-up phase and reach the Earth’s surface. It was a rare and unexpected event that left Otera and his family shaken but grateful that no one was hurt.