A mess of space detritus is merely pretermit down towards Earth , where the rubbing of the air should burn it up and destroy it before it can reach us . However , that is not always the case , and NASA is now investigating whether a piece of a battery pallet free in 2021 came crashing down through the roof of a home in Naples , Florida on March 8 .
The electric battery had been used on the International Space Station ( ISS ) for years , and once they were no longer utile , a whole pallet of them was dropped from the ISS . It was going to orb Earth for a while , but the air rubbing with the most fragile layer of the atmosphere would finally slow it down enough and make it come down .
“ Mission control in Houston commanded theCanadarm2 robotic armto release an external pallet loaded with old nickel - hydrogen batteries into Earth orbit on Thursday morning . It is safely moving aside from the place and will orbit Earth between two to four years before burning up harmlessly in the ambiance , ” NASA wrote in astatementback on March 11 , 2021 .
Best laid architectural plan , am I right ? The nine batteries were packed on the HTV9 cargo ship that chatter the ISS between May and Aug 2020 . Despite expectation that the palette was going to burn , it became exonerated as it got lower that about half a tonne of the original 2.6 would survive the atmospherical burn , as stargazer Jonathan McDowell report onTwitter .
Details were also portion out by the European Space Agency which was tracking this target .
“ The total mass of the assault and battery is forecast at 2.6 measured metric ton , most of which may bite up during the reentry . While some voice may attain the ground , the casualty risk – the likeliness of a person being hit – is very low , ” astatementsaid .
It was on a follow - up to McDowell ’s first tweet that Alejandro Otero reported that what he believe was a piece of the palette had crash through the cap and two floor of his house , almost reach his son . McDowell assisted Otero , who get in touch with the Aerospace Corporation , and NASA then got in feeling .
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" NASA take in an detail in cooperation with the homeowner , and will psychoanalyse the target at NASA ’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as shortly as potential to determine its origin , " NASA toldAFPon Tuesday . " More information will be available once the analysis is complete . "
It is ill-defined if anyone let in NASA is liable for damage . The space station was publish a fine for litter when mo ofSkylabfell in a town in Australia , but they did n’t yield it .
