A Florida man's son was nearly struck by a piece of "space junk" after it fell from the sky and ripped through the roof of their home.
There is limited space for debris on the International Space Station, meaning teams on board regularly toss their waste out into space, where it falls to Earth and usually burns up in the atmosphere.
But last month, Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, revealed on X (formerly Twitter) that an "equipment pallet" from space had reentered Earth's atmosphere.
The astronomer stated that the metal object reentered over the Gulf of Mexico, between Cancun and Cuba, and would most likely have reached Fort Myers, Florida.
McDowell wrote: "This was with the previous prediction window but a little to the northeast of the 'most likely' part of the path. A couple minutes later reentry and it would have reached Ft Myers."
Upon seeing his post, Naples homeowner Alejandro Otero commented that he was on vacation when he received a call from his son about a metal object that came crashing through his residence.
"Hello. Looks like one of those pieces missed Ft Myers and landed in my house in Naples. Tore through the roof and went [through] 2 floors. Almost [hit] my son," he revealed, sharing four images of the wreckage.
Check out their tweets below:Pictures of the aftermath show damaged roof tiles where it struck a hole into the house, a hole in the ceiling, broken floorboards, and the debris itself which was a small, metal cylinder roughly 10cm long and 4cm wide.
Speaking to WINK News, Otero said the two-pound, man-made object made a "tremendous sound," adding: "It almost hit my son. He was two rooms over and heard it all.
"I was shaken, I was completely in disbelief - what are the chances of something landing on my house with such force, to cause so much damage?" he continued. "Obviously I’m super grateful no one got hurt."
Otero said you can "tell by the shape of the top that it traveled in this direction through the atmosphere" due to the burn marks that melted the metal.
Otero told McDowell that he had been unable to contact NASA to discuss repairing the damage to his property, to which the astronomer replied: "NASA are not the right people to contact. I have passed [this on] to the experts at the Aerospace Corporation who study this sort of thing."
But according to Ars Technica, a spokesperson said the company will analyze the object "as soon as possible to determine its origin. More information will be available once the analysis is complete," as cited by Metro.
In addition to this, Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi, revealed that if the object is owned by NASA, Otero or his insurance company could make a claim against the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
However, if the "human-made space object" was launched into space by another country, then NASA may not be liable for the damage.
