Last month, a pallet of batteries discarded from the International Space Station (ISS) fell down to Earth. It mostly burned up in the atmosphere or crashed into the Atlantic but a piece of it fell through the house of Alejandro Otero in Florida who, thanks to social media, was able to contact NASA and get them to take a look at the fragment. Now the agency has confirmed that it was indeed part of the ISS.
“Based on the examination, the agency determined the debris to be a stanchion from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet. The object is made of the metal alloy Inconel, weighs 1.6 pounds, is 4 inches in height and 1.6 inches in diameter,” NASA confirmed in a statement.
A stanchion is a support bar, and while it was expected to burn through reentry, it didn’t. Quick approximate calculations of its terminal velocity suggest that it moved easily over 160 kilometers (100 miles) per hour. So it’s not surprising how deep it went through Otero’s house. As you can see in the video below, it went through a tiled roof, a ceiling, and through an occupied second-floor room, before getting stuck in the ceiling of the first floor.
It’s pure luck that nobody got hurt. Otero tried to contact NASA several times directly, but it was only after getting in touch with astronomer Jonathan McDowell on Twitter that he made any headway. Eventually, NASA got in touch and picked up the object for analysis.
What to do if you find a piece of fallen space junk?
While reports of space junk falling on inhabited land are rare globally, this appears to be the first time space debris has hit a house in the United States, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out. There is currently no official protocol in the US or elsewhere of how to report space junk, however, your best bet is if you are in a country with a space agency, contacting them. If you don’t, your local government is a good bet.
Otero and his attorney Mica Nguyen Worthy have said they are planning to file a claim with NASA for damages. However, Worthy made the point that the claim is not just for damages but to start a wider conversation about space debris and the responsibilities of space agencies and private space companies when it comes to properly disposing of material from orbit. This is frankly a conversation to have with urgency.
Who is responsible for fallen space junk?
There has been a dramatic increase in the number of rocket launches, private missions, and objects sent into orbit in the last few years. The chance of one or more human casualties from falling space debris in the next decade has reached 10 percent. That’s still small but concerning. The risk is also disproportionally faced by people from the global south due to many space missions aiming to break up over the ocean, despite little contribution to orbiting material.
International agreements on how to best dispose of falling space material can’t come soon enough. Back in 2020, a Chinese rocket landed in a village in Cote d’Ivoire in West Africa. Earlier this year, part of a Chinese rocket booster landed way too close to humans in China itself. Poor Australia seems to keep ending up with pieces of space junk on its territory: a likely piece of a rocket on a beach, a portion of a SpaceX rocket in a field in New South Wales, and, most famously, a portion of NASA’s first space station, Skylab, back in the 1970s. The town where the piece of Skylab fell fined NASA for littering but the fine was not actually paid by NASA.
Establishing rules, protocols, and responsibilities will help keep the chance of fallen rockets and other space junk in inhabited areas as low as possible. However, with that on increase,they would also provide a clear route for people who have to request damage compensation when something like this happens.
Source Link: NASA Confirms Piece Of ISS Fell On Florida House – What To Do If This Happens To You
