In March 2021, mission controllers in Houston used the Canadarm2 robotic arm to release an external pallet full of old nickel-hydrogen batteries from the International Space Station. Three years later, part of this assembly hit a house in Naples, Florida.
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In March 2021, mission controllers in Houston used the Canadarm2 robotic arm to release an external pallet full of old nickel-hydrogen batteries from the International Space Station. Three years later, part of this assembly hit a house in Naples, Florida.
NASA
Alejandro Otero was on vacation out of town last month when his son called him from their home in Naples, Florida, to tell him something shocking and unbelievable. Her son, 19, was home alone when he heard an extremely loud noise – and realized it was coming from inside the house.
“When he called me to give me the news, he asked us to make sure we were seated to hear when he was supposed to tell us,” Otero told NPR.
“He didn’t even know how to tell me what happened and we had to watch and listen to the security cameras to try to piece together what caused the loud crashing sound,” he said. “It looked like the whole house was shaken, so we didn’t know if there was an earthquake or what. When he saw the hole go through the house, he realized something had fallen through .”
The mysterious object is finally identified
After running home, Otero called the sheriff’s department – and a deputy who came to the house removed a piece of metal from the floorboards.
“It was like nothing I had seen before,” Otero said.
He quickly realized that the object was not a meteorite. It was cylindrical, and while one end melted from the heat of re-entry, the other had a smooth, round shape with a circular indentation. A shallow, even groove ran down its side.
Otero left for know what the object was, by posting images and videos online. He landed on a likely but extraordinary suspect: a large pallet of batteries from the International Space Station that NASA released for an uncontrolled reentry three years ago.
The European Space Agency had warned that the batteries and the pallet would re-enter the atmosphere early in the afternoon of March 8. Otero’s home was hit that day, shortly after 2:30 p.m. ET.
NASA says this pole, right, was supposed to burn during re-entry, but instead hit a man’s house in Florida. The object is seen here next to another pristine candlestick, on the left.
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“The 18th Space Defense Squadron had anticipated that the reentry location would be in the Gulf of Mexico,” the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit research and development organization that advises the U.S. government, said in a statement at NPR. “Naples FL was directly downstream of this location and in the direction the debris could have been moving.”
NASA recovered the object from Otero’s home and recently confirmed that the object was part of the pallet of batteries – a remnant of some 5,800 pounds of material – that had been jettisoned from the space station. The “space object” was a pole, NASA said, that held the batteries on a cargo pallet. The surviving object was a little smaller than a soda can and made of Inconel, a strong, heat-resistant superalloy.
“We feel very lucky and blessed”
When the object struck Otero’s home in southwest Florida, his son was just a few rooms away from the point of impact.
“We can’t help but think about what could have happened if the situation had gone just a little to the right or to the left, how much more dire the situation could have been,” Otero said. “We feel very lucky and blessed that everyone is OK.”
But the incident also raised immediate concerns — from how to deal with a hole in the roof to whether the object could be dangerous or toxic. For a time, Otero’s son was alone.
“Being home alone was worrying because he didn’t know if the debris was dangerous (or what it was),” Otero said via email. That concern grew, Otero said, when he later realized the object may have been linked to a power module used in space.
“Once NASA contacted us, my attorney asked them for reasonable assurance that the item was not toxic or dangerous,” Otero said. “NASA was able to give that assurance,” he added, and his family was relieved when the agency did not send people in hazmat suits to retrieve the object.
“The material was expected to burn completely upon entry into Earth’s atmosphere,” NASA said after conducting its analysis. The agency is working to understand how part of it hit Otero’s house, adding that it may need to modify the technical models it uses to estimate how objects break when atmospheric re-entry.
The incident highlights concerns about the amount of space debris in Earth’s orbit and raises a rare and complex question: Who should pay to repair a house hit by debris falling from orbit?
File a claim for damage caused by a space object
When asked how much damage the space object had caused, Otero said his home insurance had set the adjusted cost at more than $15,000, adding that he had also assessed other damages not covered by the insurance. ‘insurance.
“We are in the process of sending NASA our claim which will include insured and uninsured damages,” he said, adding that his lawyer has been in contact with NASA’s legal counsel.
Otero says his insurer quickly helped bring in contractors to do the repair work.
So, who could ultimately be held responsible for this type of damage, when an object launched into space crashes into a home?
“It’s sort of unprecedented,” Mark Sundahl, who has worked in space law for more than 20 years, told NPR. Determining liability in such cases can be complicated, he said.
“It will depend on which space station module comes from,” said Sundahl, director of the Global Space Law Center at Cleveland State University.
“We have an international convention on liability for damage caused by space objects. It dates from 1972. So we have rules in place.”
If space debris falls back to Earth, Sundahl said, “The launching state is absolutely responsible for any damage to property or people occurring on the Earth’s surface.”
“There is a different rule for (incidents) in space,” he added. “If one satellite hits another, it’s not absolute strict liability – you have to show fault. But when something lands on an innocent person and it’s in their house, there is a strict liability.”
But, Sundahl added, if the object in question turns out to be part of a U.S. module, “then international law no longer applies. It becomes a matter of domestic law, and the owner should bring a tort action.” against the federal government.
In the Naples incident, the object appears to be of American origin: NASA claims that the candlestick came from “NASA flight support equipment.” The agency did not immediately respond to an inquiry from NPR about possible liability.
Has something like this ever happened?
“We had a major accident” involving an object falling out of orbit several decades ago, Sundahl said.
In 1978, a Soviet satellite, Kosmos 954, “disintegrated over Canada and scattered radioactive fuel across the country,” he said. “And they helped clean it up – under international law, they paid the expenses.”
About once a week, according to the European Space Agency, a large space object re-enters the atmosphere, “with the majority of associated fragments burning up before reaching the ground.”
There have been many cases of debris from space programs re-entering Earth’s atmosphere and not completely burning up before falling to the surface, Sundahl says. But these usually fall into the ocean; he is not aware of any confirmed reports of man-made space objects causing damage like in Florida recently.
There is at least one documented case of a person being struck by an object falling from the sky. In Alabama, a woman was struck by a meteorite in 1954 (she survived with a bruise) – but that case didn’t involve space debris.
“So this is something new,” in Florida, said Sundahl, whose group recently held a symposium on the threats posed by orbital debris. The United States currently tracks nearly 45,000 objects in orbit, including some 18,800 pieces of space debris, according to Space-Track.org, the public website of U.S. Space Command.
“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that this is the greatest threat to humanity’s use of space, that we are polluting the orbits to the point where it might become difficult to use them. ” Sundahl said.
He says he is “very optimistic” that changes to laws and policies can reduce or eliminate threats to orbital systems.
“We all depend on space infrastructure in many different ways,” he said.
The International Space Station, which is about the size of a football field, is itself the subject of a “de-orbit” plan as it nears the end of its useful life after more than two decades of continuous human occupation. NASA says the station will remain operational until at least 2030 and plans “a controlled, targeted re-entry into an isolated, uninhabited area of the ocean.”
As for Otero, he said: “There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this event. I hope no one else has to go through this. It was really scary for our whole family and we are very grateful that no one had to experience this physically harmed.”
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