A few weeks ago, a 1 kg piece of debris broke through the roof of Alejandro Otero’s two-story house in Florida. The Nest camera recorded the noise at 14:34 local time — this is important because at 14:29, debris from the ISS re-entered the atmosphere. At that time, the object was moving over the Gulf of Mexico, heading to southwest Florida.
Otero was not at home at the time, but his son was in the house.
The debris from the ISS consisted of discharged batteries attached to a cargo pallet and was supposed to return to Earth in a controlled manner, but due to a series of delays, NASA decided to «eject» it from the station in an uncontrolled manner — most of it was to burn in our planet’s atmosphere.
As noted by Ars TechnicaNASA representatives arrived at Otero’s home to pick up the fragment and «analyze the object as soon as possible to determine its origin».
According to the space agency, the entire pallet, including 9 batteries from the ISS power system, weighed about 2.6 tons and was larger than a standard kitchen refrigerator. Objects of this mass often fall to Earth on controlled trajectories — for example, malfunctioning satellites or rocket stages that have reached orbit and completed their missions.
In a post on X, Otero wrote that he was waiting for notifications from «responsible agencies» to determine the amount of damage to his home.
According to Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the University of Mississippi Center for Air and Space Law, if the facility belongs to NASA, Otero or its insurance company could file a lawsuit against the federal government.
«It will be even more interesting if it turns out that this material did not come from the United States,» she said. «If a man-made space object that was launched into space by another country caused damage on Earth, that country would be absolutely liable to the homeowner».
The batteries belonged to NASA, but were attached to a structure launched by the Japanese Space Agency.
NASA officials said that the debris (which was the most massive object ever ejected from the ISS) would re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere «without harm» on March 8, citing a thorough analysis.
«We do not expect any part of it to survive re-entry», — NASA said.
At the same time, other space experts disagreed with the agency — The Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research center, notes that «typically» 20-40% of the mass of a large object reaches the ground (the exact percentage depends on the design, and these nickel-hydrogen batteries were made of metals with relatively high density).
The European Space Agency also recognizedThe company says that some fragments of the structure may reach the ground.
The story of the ISS debris is related to by the unsuccessful launch of a Russian spacecraft «alliance» more than 5 years ago, which was forced to make a rapid ballistic descent due to problems with the launch vehicle. On board were Russian Alexander Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague, who was supposed to go into space to install a new set of lithium-ion batteries delivered by the Japanese HTV cargo ship to the ISS, but the mission was postponed until 2018.
This delay in the carefully crafted schedule has thrown a wrench into the entire multi-year plan to modernize the batteries of the ISS electrical system. Each time, the HTV delivered new batteries to the station and picked up the old ones — the last time it happened in 2020, and since then the last design with faulty batteries has remained on the ISS (other cargo vehicles — SpaceX’s Dragon, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus, and Russia’s Progress — cannot accommodate the HTV cargo pallet).
In March 2021, NASA «ejected the» cargo with batteries using a robotic arm — they drifted in orbit for three years until aerodynamic drag pushed the structure back into the atmosphere.
If NASA confirms that the debris that fell on Otero’s house last month came from the ISS — it would not be the first such situation involving damage to someone’s property as a result of an object falling from orbit.
Fortunately, no significant injuries to people have been reported — according to ESA, the annual risk of human injury from space debris is less than 1 in 100 billion.
At the same time, there are a few devices that have been severely damaged. In 2003, a 30-centimeter metal bracket from the «Columbia» spacecraft pierced the roof of a dentist’s office in Texas. In 1997, an Oklahoma resident Lottie Williams was shot in the shoulder a small piece of unknown material was cut inwhich experts later attributed to the re-entry of the upper stage of a Delta II rocket. There was also an incident in 1969 when a piece of a Soviet spacecraft hit a small Japanese vessel off the coast of Siberiawounding five people.
When a large Chinese Long March 5B rocket de-orbited in 2020, its debris fell on a settlement in the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire. The design of the rocket is unique in that its first stage actually accelerates to orbital speed, rather than relying on the upper stage to launch the payload into orbit, as most rockets do.
The Long March 5B main stage weighs about 20 tons, is about 30 meters long and 5 meters wide. An object of this size can cause a lot of damage if it crashes to Earth somewhere else…. China did not design the rocket to re-enter the atmosphere in a controlled manner, so a few days after launch, the launch vehicle lands as it pleases.
To date, four Long March 5Bs have been launched, and more flights are planned in the coming years to launch Chinese Internet satellites and the Chinese Astronomical Observatory, which is comparable in size to the Hubble Space Telescope. After the launch of Long March 5B in 2022 over the Indian Ocean recorded «meteor shower»which later turned out to be the wreckage of an unguided missile.
In 1978, the wreckage of a Soviet nuclear-powered military satellite, Cosmos 954, was found in northern Canada. Although they did not injure anyone or damage homes, the country resorted to search operations to collect as much radioactive debris as possible. At the time, the Soviet Union paid Canada 3 million Canadian dollars to settle the case.
«Spaceflight nations should minimize risks to people and property on Earth from space re-entries and maximize transparency about these operations», — NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in 2021 after one of the 5B Long March re-entries.
Starlink Internet satellites are designed to burn up during re-entry. SpaceX has recently developed trajectories for test flights of its Starship due to concerns about an uncontrolled re-entry into the atmosphere. The company’s rocket is the largest object ever launched into space and could pose a significant risk if it falls to Earth uncontrollably.
During the first few test flights, SpaceX deliberately guided Starship on a trajectory that would allow it to crash over a remote area of the ocean within an hour or two of launch, rather than putting it into a stable orbit where it could remain for days or weeks. This ensures that Starship will be able to safely re-enter the atmosphere until SpaceX demonstrates the ability to de-orbiter for a controlled re-entry.