Well, this is awkward. A NASA investigation has confirmed that a small piece of trash discarded from the International Space Station (ISS) survived atmospheric re-entry and arrived at a home in Florida. This is a rare case of space debris causing damage to Earth, and homeowners may seek legal action.
March 2021, NASA has disposed of huge pallets of old batteries. In an orbital laboratory where they hope to burn up through Earth’s atmosphere. Three years later, a piece of metal hardware unexpectedly survived the heated journey. fell through the roof of a house In Naples, Florida.
The homeowner reported the incident last month, and NASA recovered the object for analysis. From the blog update On Monday, the space agency examined the size and characteristics of the object and determined it was, in fact, a fragment of flight support equipment used to mount batteries on cargo pallets.
The cargo pallet contained nine batteries and weighed approximately 5,800 pounds, making it the heaviest piece of trash discarded from the ISS. It was like that Canadarm2 kicked out by robot arm And the uncontrolled re-entry caused it to fall towards Earth. The chaotic fall from orbit is finally over. Cargo pallets restocked on March 8th It’s somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico around 3:29 PM ET.
Around the same time, Alejandro Otero reported that a cylindrical object crashed into his home in Florida, creating holes in the ceiling and floor. The object that survived reentry is made of the metal alloy Inconel and weighs about 1.6 pounds, 4 inches tall and 1.6 inches in diameter, according to NASA.
“The International Space Station will conduct a detailed investigation of the release and re-entry analysis to determine causes of debris survival and update modeling and analysis as needed,” NASA said in a blog update.
Sure, the analysis seems reasonable, but when NASA disposed of those batteries in space, they hoped the entire pallet would burn up on re-entry or that the surviving fragments would land in an uninhabited area. Unfortunately, the space agency has been caught littering and now has to deal with the consequences. Homeowners can file a claim seeking compensation for damage done to their home through the Federal Tort Claims Act. NASA said SpacePolicyOnline.
that much Chances of space junk ending up on someone’s property Slim but not zero. On average, 200 to 400 man-made objects re-enter through Earth’s atmosphere each year, and space agencies generally accept a probability threshold of 1 in 10,000 for the casualty risk of a single uncontrolled re-entry. ESA.
As the space industry continues to grow, the amount of debris raining down on Earth is increasing, increasing the likelihood of injury. There have been no space debris casualties to date, but a recent study suggests there is a 10% chance that there will be one or more casualties from falling rocket parts within the next 10 years.
Related articles: Death from falling rocket debris is unlikely, but that is changing.
The case of older ISS batteries is somewhat unusual. The cargo was launched to the space station in May 2020 by a Japanese ship to help astronauts replace old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new, more efficient lithium-ion batteries. The old batteries were to be placed inside the Japanese HTV cargo ship for proper disposal. However, this type of equipment disposal on the ISS would have required NASA to place the batteries inside a cargo pallet and use the space station’s robotic arm to dispose of them, which would have resulted in an uncontrolled re-entry.
“NASA is committed to operating responsibly in low Earth orbit and mitigating as many risks as possible to protect people on Earth when we need to launch space hardware,” NASA wrote.
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