NASA says it expected space station garbage to burn up. The debris smashed into a Florida home instead
A piece of garbage jettisoned from the International Space Station unexpectedly survived a fiery reentry from orbit last month and pierced the roof of a home in Florida, according to NASA.
When the federal agency disposed of a slab of spaceborne refuse weighing about 5,800 pounds (2,630 kilograms), it expected the trash to disintegrate as it plunged into Earth’s atmosphere on March 8.
But a small piece of the cargo roughly the size of a smartphone survived — and it crashed into a home in Naples, Florida, last month, NASA confirmed in an April 15 news release.
“It was a tremendous sound. It almost hit my son,” Alejandro Otero, who identified himself as the homeowner, told CNN affiliate WINK News in March, days after the incident. “He was two rooms over and heard it all.”
The impact event defied NASA’s expectations about what can and cannot survive the reentry process, according to the space agency — and it could have broader implications for future space debris disposal efforts.
