NASA says it has determined that the object that crashed into the roof of a Florida home last month was a piece of space junk from equipment disposed of on the International Space Station.
NAPLES, Fla. — A mysterious object that slammed into the roof of a Florida home last month was a piece of space junk from equipment discarded on the International Space Station, NASA confirmed Monday.
The cylindrical object that tore through a house in Naples on March 8 has been transported to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral for analysis.
The space agency said it was a metal support used to mount old batteries on a charging platform for disposal. The space platform was scrapped in 2021, and it was expected that the entire payload would eventually burn up upon entering Earth's atmosphere, but one piece of it survived.
The coin weighs 1.6 lbs (0.7 kg) and is approximately 4 inches (10 cm) long and approximately 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) wide.
Homeowner Alejandro Otero told TV station WINK at the time that he was on vacation when his son told him what happened. Otero returned home early to check on the house, only to find that the object had gone through his ceiling and torn up the floor.
“I was shaking. I was in complete disbelief. What are the odds of something falling on my house that hard to cause that much damage,” Otero said. “I'm so thankful no one was hurt.”
