Well, this is embarrassing. A NASA investigation has confirmed that a small piece of trash thrown from the International Space Station (ISS) survived re-entry and ended up in a Florida home. This is a rare case of space debris causing damage to Earth, and homeowners may be seeking legal action.
March 2021, NASA throws away a bunch of old batteries From the orbiting laboratory, the hope is that it will burn up through Earth’s atmosphere.Three years later, a piece of metal hardware unexpectedly survives the intense journey and is Falling from the roof of a house Naples, Florida.
The homeowner reported the incident last month, and NASA retrieved the object for analysis.in blog renew On Monday, the space agency confirmed that after studying the size and characteristics of the object, it was indeed fragments of flight support equipment used to mount batteries on cargo pallets.
The cargo pallet contains nine batteries and weighs approximately 5,800 pounds, making it the heaviest piece of trash ever thrown from the International Space Station.Originally Thrown by the Canadarm2 robotic arm and tumbled toward Earth during an uncontrolled reentry.When the chaotic fall from orbit finally comes to an end Pallets of goods re-entered on March 8 Somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico around 3:29 PM ET.
Around the same time, Alejandro Otero reported that a cylindrical object crashed through his Florida house, creating a hole in the ceiling and floor. The object that survived re-entry is made of the metal alloy Inconel, weighs about 1.6 pounds, is 4 inches tall and 1.6 inches in diameter, according to NASA.
“The International Space Station will conduct detailed ejection and re-entry investigations to determine why the debris survived and update models and analyzes as needed,” NASA wrote in an update on its blog.
Homeowners can file a claim through the Federal Tort Claims Act for compensation for damage to their home, NASA Tell Space Policy Online.
this The likelihood of space junk landing on someone’s property It’s slim, but not zero. On average, 200 to 400 man-made objects re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere each year, and space agencies generally accept that the probability threshold for the risk of casualties from a single uncontrolled re-entry is 1 in 10,000. ESA.
There’s something unusual about the International Space Station’s old batteries. The cargo was launched to the space station in May 2020 by a Japanese spacecraft to help astronauts replace old nickel-metal hydride batteries with new, more efficient lithium-ion batteries. The old batteries were supposed to be placed on the Japanese HTV cargo ship for proper disposal. However, the ISS’s backlog of handling such equipment forced NASA to put the batteries in cargo trays and throw them out using the station’s robotic arm, which resulted in their uncontrolled reentry into the atmosphere.
“NASA remains committed to operating responsibly in low-Earth orbit and minimizing risks when space hardware must be released to protect people on Earth,” the space agency wrote.
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