NASA confirms space junk crashed into Florida home
Newsy
A piece of debris originating from the International Space Station crashed through two floors of a Florida home in March.
NASA officials confirmed on Monday that fragments left from the removal of aging nickel hydride batteries from the International Space Station crashed into a Florida home in March.
NASA said that the batteries, which weighed 5,800 pounds, were released from the International Space Station in March 2021 using a robotic arm as the station underwent upgrades. The agency expected the materials to burn up in Earth's atmosphere on March 8, 2024.
Instead, some of the nearly three-ton piece of hardware survived reentry and crashed through the roof of a Naples, Florida, home. NASA said it determined the debris to be a stanchion used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet.
NASA determined the remaining debris weighs 1.6 pounds, is 4 inches in height and 1.6 inches in diameter.
"The International Space Station will perform a detailed investigation of the jettison and re-entry analysis to determine the cause of the debris survival and to update modeling and analysis, as needed," NASA said in a statement. "NASA specialists use engineering models to estimate how objects heat up and break apart during atmospheric re-entry. These models require detailed input parameters and are regularly updated when debris is found to have survived atmospheric re-entry to the ground."
