On March 8, a mysterious cylindrical object crashed through Alejandro Otero's home in Florida.
Mysterious Cylinder Object Crashes Florida Home
At 2:34 pm on March 8, the object smashed the roof and both floors of the home of Otero in Naples, Florida. By the time it happened, Otero was reportedly on vacation.
The cylindrical object weighed close to 0.9 kilograms and was a few inches in length.
While the object's origins are yet to be determined, Otero thinks that it could be one of the nine drained and discarded batteries from the ISS.
Otero shares on a post on X that the object tore through his roof and blasted through both floors. The object also almost hit his son.
Space Junk From International Space Station
The time of the event is crucial as it matches the recorded reentry of space debris, recorded by the US Space Command. By this time, the object was heading towards southwest Florida, treading over a path on the Gulf of Mexico.
The space junk from the ISS consisted of drained batteries linked to a cargo pallet. This was supposed to re-enter Earth in a controlled way. However, due to a series of delays, the cargo pallet missed its ride. Hence, NASA had to jettison the batteries from the ISS in 2021 to go for an unguided reentry.
For this reentry, most battery and cargo carrier material could have likely burned up as it entered the Earth's atmosphere. Temperature levels could have gone as high as several thousands of degrees, leading to the vaporization of most material before reaching the ground. However, one could have survived the reentry.
Otero gave the mysterious object to NASA officials. Joshua Finch, a spokesperson from NASA, says that NASA collected the item with the homeowner's cooperation. The agency will be analyzing the object at the Kennedy Space Center of NASA in Florida to learn more about its origin.
Once engineers are able to identify the object's provenance, Otero will seek to file a claim for the federal government to aid with his house repair. However, the issue could be quite complicated, as the batteries were NASA-owned but were linked to a pallet structure launched by the JAXA, space agency of Japan.
Space Junks Hitting the Earth
Florida is not the only place that has seen space junk impacts. In fact, between 2020 and 2022, four of the Long March 5B booster of China, which are the workhouses of the growing space program of the country, fell into the Earth. This impact rained debris down the Indian Ocean, Borneo, and Ivory Coast.
In 2021 and 2022, debris from SpaceX rockets that were falling smashed into a Washington Farm. They also landed on an Australian sheep farm.
All over the world, space agencies are trying to monitor the over 30,000 largest pieces of junk. However, there are several other debris pieces that are too tiny to track.
Specialists have proposed several ways to tidy the skies of the Earth. These methods include collecting junk with nets or clawed robots and firing a tether, which could run 0.8 kilometers in length, from another craft to grab the junk.
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