NASA Confirms Origin Of Space Object That Crashed Into Florida Home

The agency said in a blog post it had collected the item and determined it was a piece of hardware from the ISS.

NASA confirmed Tuesday an object that plummeted into a Florida home last month was a piece of junk released from the International Space Station.

A small, 1.6-pound metal cylinder crashed through the roof of a home in Naples, Florida, on March 8. Alejandro Otero told a local news channel his son was shocked by a loud bang as the object ripped through two levels of his home. He posted photos of the item on X and asked NASA to contact him after failing to get through to someone who could identify it.

“Something ripped through the house and then made a big hole on the floor and on the ceiling,” Otero told WINK-TV. “When we heard that, we were like, impossible, and then immediately I thought a meteorite.”

NASA said in a blog post it had collected the item and determined it was a piece of hardware from flight support equipment used to release a cargo pallet of aging batteries. The agency ejected the pallet in 2021, and it was expected to fully burn up in the atmosphere on March 8 of this year.

The hardware that failed to do so was made from Inconel, a metal alloy that can withstand high temperatures and other extreme environments.