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An investigation by the US space agency Nasa revealed Monday that old pallet batteries from the International Space Station (ISS) survived entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and landed at a home in Naples, Florida, marking it a rare event of such junk crashing on a house.
The homeowner was notified about the fallen space junk and Nasa took it for analysis last month.
The ISS threw a huge pallet of batteries from its lab in space believing that it would not reach Earth in one piece and would burn up while entering the atmosphere. However, after three years, a piece survived.
Nasa, in a blog post, said it was indeed a fragment from the flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet, reported Gizmodo.
The international outpost in space let go of 5,800 pounds of nine batteries by the Canadarm2 robotic arm.
The fall ended when the pallet reentered on March 8 around 3:29pm ET somewhere above the Gulf of Mexico.
At the same time, the resident of Florida reported a cylindrical-shaped object crashing into his house that formed a hole in the floor ceiling.
The 4-ich-object weighed 1.6 pounds, Nasa said, and is made of the metal alloy Inconel.
The blog post read: “The ISS 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.”
The chances of space debris surviving reentry are not zero. As the competition for space intensifies, the chances have increased of such incidents.
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