Charles H. Sloan-Video shows space junk after object from ISS came crashing through Florida home

No one was more surprised by the sight of space junk in his home than Florida resident Alejandro Otero,Charles H. Sloan who is currently dealing with damages made by a nearly 2-pound piece of hardware from space.

NASA confirmed earlier this week that the hardware from nickel hydride batteries, that crashed through Otero’s roof and two floors came from the International Space Station, USA TODAY previously reported. 

Ground controllers in March 2021 had used the ISS’s robotic arm to "release a cargo pallet containing aging nickel hydride batteries from the space station,” according to a NASA blog post. They figured that the 5,8000 pound mass of hardware would “fully burn up during entry through Earth's atmosphere.”

But it didn’t, at least not all of it, with a piece crashing through Otero’s home. 

“Something ripped through the house and then made a big hole on the floor and on the ceiling,” Otero told WINK News, which broke the story. “When we heard that, we were like, 'Impossible,' and then immediately I thought a meteorite.”

Watch the damage done by the 'space junk' below

Video shows multiple people, including Otero, gathered around the piece from the battery pallet, trying to determine how it managed to cause so much damage. 

“Look at the charring on it. The heat … burnt it through,” one person says. 

The continue to inspect the object, wondering how it managed to get through the roof and two of the levels. 

“But its burnt. And it has something inside of it …. ‘Oh wow, feel that thing,’” another person says.  The group concludes that the piece of junk definitely looks “manmade.”  Otero’s son was home the day the hardware struck the home, two rooms away from the place it struck. 

Otero’s Nest home security camera captured the crash, which was heard around 2:34 p.m. The crash coincides with the time the U.S. Space Command noted the entry of some space debris from the ISS, according to reporting by Ars Technica, a tech publication. 

The “jettison” caused damage to the roof and floors, leaving Otero to patch the medium-sized holes created on impact. 

NASA current evaluating battery pallet debris, launches investigation

NASA has already collected the item, analyzing it at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. They determined over the course of the analysis that the piece of space debris was a “stanchion from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet.”

The object that crashed through Otero’s home weighs 1.6 pounds, is 4 inches in height and 1.6 inches in diameter, according to NASA.

The ISS will conduct a “ detailed investigation” to determine the reason why the object didn’t burn up completely as predicted. They will also “update modeling and analysis, as needed.” 

Contributing: Gabe Hauari