Mysterious Object That Tore Through Florida Home May Be From the ISS

A chunk of space debris that came crashing down through the ceiling of a home in Florida may have come from the International Space Station (ISS).

Naples local Alejandro Otero shared pictures of the object on X, formerly Twitter, on March 15 in response to a post by astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, about a chunk of space debris reentering the atmosphere on March 8 over Florida.

“The EP-9 equipment pallet reentered at 1929 UTC over the Gulf of Mexico between Cancun and Cuba. This was witih [sic] the previous prediction window but a little to the northeast of the ‘most likely’ part of the path. A couple minutes later reentry and it would have reached Ft Myers,” McDowell posted to X.

“Looks like one of those pieces missed Ft Myers and landed in my house in Naples,” Otero replied. “Tore through the roof and went thru 2 floors. Almost his [sic] my son.”

The cylindrical piece of debris weighed nearly 2 pounds and measured a few inches long. According to McDowell, the object may have been one of nine batteries discarded from the ISS in 2021, as a Japanese space agency JAXA cargo pallet carrying these batteries reentered the Earth’s atmosphere above the Gulf of Mexico at around the same time.

NASA has now collected the piece of debris and will soon confirm if it is indeed from the ISS.

“NASA collected an item in cooperation with the homeowner, and will analyze the object at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as soon as possible to determine its origin,” NASA said in a statement to Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday. “More information will be available once the analysis is complete.”

There are thousands and thousands of pieces of space debris in orbit around the Earth, ranging from dead satellites to tiny specks left over from collisions. According…