The International Space Station is a real observatory in orbit. (Photo: Reuters/NASA/Roscosmos)
An object that fell from the sky and crashed into an American home turned out to be debris ejected from the International Space Station (ISS), US space agency NASA confirmed on Monday.
The strange story came to light last month when Alejandro Otero of Naples, who lives in the state (southeast) of Florida, posted to his son on March 8.
According to space watchers, this occurred at a time and place that closely matched official predictions of an atmospheric ignition of part of a space cargo platform carrying old batteries ejected from the orbital outpost in 2021, a coincidence.
NASA, which later collected the fallen object at Otero's home for analysis, confirmed the speculation in a new blog post.
“Based on analysis, the agency determined that the debris was a stanchion of NASA flight support equipment used to place batteries on the charging platform,” he said.
“The object is made of the alloy Incon, weighs 0.7 kilograms, is 10 centimeters tall and 4 centimeters in diameter,” he explained.
NASA pledged to study how the atmosphere would withstand total destruction, and said it would update its engineering models following the incident.
“NASA is committed to operating responsibly in low-Earth orbit and mitigating as much risk as possible to protect people on Earth when space hardware is deployed,” he said. AFP
