A few weeks ago, an object, presumably from the ISS, fell on the roof of a house in Florida. The house belongs to Alejandro Otero, who was absent at the time of the incident. However, the incident was recorded by a home camera. The object fell at 14:34 local time on March 8, which corresponds to the time when the US Space Command reported the re-entry of space debris from the ISS. According to the Kennedy Space Center, the object was over the Gulf of Mexico, moving toward southwest Florida.
The object was a discharged battery from the ISS attached to a cargo pallet that was originally supposed to return to Earth in a controlled manner. However, due to technical delays, in 2021 NASA decided to remove it from orbit so that it would burn up in the atmosphere.
NASA took the debris from the homeowner, and Kennedy Space Center engineers will analyze it to determine its origin. Most of the batteries and the cargo pallet were supposed to burn up during reentry, as their temperature reached several thousand degrees.
The pallet with the failed batteries weighed more than 2.6 tons. Objects of this mass occasionally fall to Earth, usually as failed satellites or rocket stages after a mission.
Alejandro Otero is waiting for information from the “responsible agencies” to provide compensation. 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 can go to court to claim compensation under federal law.
If it turns out that the facility belongs to another country, that country is liable for the damage caused. This may turn out to be the case – the batteries belonged to NASA, but they were attached to a pallet structure launched by the Japanese space agency.
