Space object smashes through roof of Florida home, NASA confirms surprising origin

In early March, a man from Naples, Florida, took to X, formerly Twitter, to report that an object crashed through his home's roof and two floors, almost hitting his son, who was home at the time of impact.

The homeowner is Alejandro Otero, and on March 8, an object smashed through his roof and both floors of his two-story home, luckily missing his son. Following the impact, NASA launched an investigation into the origin of the object, with predictions from astronomers tracing its origins back to jettisoned debris from the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA has since wrapped up the investigation and confirmed the object is debris from the ISS that was launched from the floating laboratory three years ago. NASA engineers took the object to Kennedy Space Center and confirmed it was a piece of the EP-9 support equipment that was used to mount batteries onto a cargo pallet.

• Read more: NASA confirms a space object crashed through the roof of a home

3

This object was let go from the ISS for an unguided entry into Earth's atmosphere on March 11, 2021, which NASA expected to "harmlessly" burn up in Earth's atmosphere. That prediction simply didn't pan out.

3

The cargo pallet that was released from the ISS weighed 5,800 pounds, and was expected to fully burn up in Earth's atmosphere, but the piece that survived NASA determined to be a stanchion, or support for the batteries, is made of the metal alloy Inconel, weighs 1.6 pounds, is 4 inches in height and 1.6 inches in diameter.

"I was shaking. I was completely in disbelief. What are the chances of something landing on my house with such force to cause so much damage. I'm super grateful that nobody got hurt," said Otero to Fort Meyers CBS affiliate WINK-TV

"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 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," writes NASA