NASA has confirmed the origin of the space debris that fell into a Florida home
By ForGeeks The metal object — is a prop that was supposed to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
NASA has confirmed suspicions that the strange object that crashed into a Florida home last month did indeed come from the International Space Station (ISS). The agency analyzed the cylindrical object after it punched through the roof and two floors of a home in Naples on March 8 and determined that it came from a cargo pallet with aging batteries that was launched from the ISS in 2021.
NASA has confirmed that the object came from the International Space Station (ISS).
To be more specific, NASA said in a blog post on Monday that the offending object was a support component used to secure batteries on a 5,800-pound (2,630-kilogram) pallet being lowered from the space station. Made of Inconel (a metal alloy that can withstand extreme conditions such as heat, pressure or mechanical stress), the support found weighed 1.6 pounds and measured 4 inches tall and 1.6 inches in diameter — slightly smaller than a standard Red Bull can.
The object was found in the space station.
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It’s not uncommon for space debris to come back to Earth — for example, components of rockets launched by SpaceX and (most recently) China’s National Space Administration have crashed into objects, though normally such debris would burn up in the atmosphere. According to NASA, that should have happened in this case, and it is now trying to figure out why it didn’t.
And that’s what NASA says happened.
«The hardware was expected to burn up completely upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere on March 8, 2024» —NASA said. «The International Space Station will conduct a detailed jettison investigation and re-entry analysis to determine why the debris survived and update modeling and analysis as needed. These models require detailed input parameters and are regularly updated when debris is found to have survived re-entry and fallen to the ground».
Modeling and analysis will be updated as needed.
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