Object that slammed into Florida home was indeed space junk from ISS, NASA confirms

The Mysterious object that crashed through the roof of a Florida home last month did indeed come from the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has confirmed.

That home, in the seaside city of Naples, belongs to Alejandro Otero. Shortly after the March 8 incident, Otero said he thought the offending object was part of a cargo pallet packed with 5,800 pounds (2,630 kilograms) of aging batteries jettisoned from the ISS in March 2021.

And he was right, according to a new NASA analysis of the object, which was performed at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.

"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," agency officials wrote in an update today (April 15).

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The cylindrical piece of space junk is made of a metallic alloy called Inconel, they added. It weighs 1.6 pounds (0.7 kg) and measures 4 inches (10 centimeters) high by 1.6 inches (4 cm) wide.

The nickel-hydride batteries were dumped after new lithium-ion versions were delivered to the ISS for a power-supply upgrade. The pallet and the batteries were expected to burn up completely in Earth's atmosphere, NASA officials said in today's update — yet that didn't happen, and the agency wants to learn why.