NASA Recovers Debris That Crashed Through Florida Man's Roof

Victor Tangermann
·2 min read
39

Space Junkie

A sizable cylindrical object crashed through the roof of Alexandro Otero's home in Naples, Florida — and experts believe it may have originated from the International Space Station.

While NASA scientists have since recovered the debris and are currently analyzing it, Ars Technica reports, we still don't have confirmation that the 2-pound object came from space.

But given the evidence, there's a decent chance it once belonged to the aging orbital outpost.

Pictures shared by Otero on X-formerly-Twitter show the carnage, with the object punching through wood and drywall with ease.

"It was a tremendous sound," Otero recalled in an interview with local CBS-affiliated news station WINK. "It almost hit my son. He was two rooms over and heard it all."

https://twitter.com/Alejandro0tero/status/1768729031493427225

Punching Holes

According to Ars' reporting, Otero's Nest home security camera recorded the sound of the object crashing through his roof, just minutes after the US Space Command recorded the reentry of a piece of space debris. Its orbital path also placed it somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico, making its way toward Florida, where Otero resides.

Otero may even have a case in trying to make a claim against the federal government to pay for the hole in his roof.

"It gets more interesting if this material is discovered to be not originally from the United States," Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi, told Ars. "If it is a human-made space object which was launched into space by another country, which caused damage on Earth, that country would be absolutely liable to the homeowner for the damage caused."

The debris, per the report, may have once belonged to a cargo pallet that was jettisoned from the space station, reentering the atmosphere on March 8. The NASA-owned pallet, however, was originally launched by the Japanese space agency, which could complicate matters.

For now, we await word from NASA.

"More information will be available once the analysis is complete," space agency spokesperson Josh Finch told Ars.

More on space junk: Astronaut Tried to Photograph Mt. Fuji, Snapped Picture of Space Junk Instead