OAN’s Brooke Mallory
5:51 PM – Monday, April 15, 2024
NASA announced on Monday that a piece of “space debris” from equipment left over from the International Space Station was the “mystery object” that broke through the roof of a Florida home last month.
After tearing through the Naples roof on March 8th, the cylindrical object was transported to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral for examination.
According to the space agency, it is a metal support that is used to install outdated batteries for disposal on a cargo pallet. One component of the pallet survived the 2021 launch from the space station, despite the fact that it was anticipated that the load would eventually burn up completely upon entering Earth’s atmosphere.
The metal piece measured 4 inches (10 centimeters) in height and about 1 1/2 inches (4 centimeters) in width. It weighed 1.6 pounds (0.7 kilograms).
Alejandro Otero, the homeowner, told station WINK at the time that he was informed about the incident by his son while on vacation. When Otero arrived home early to witness the damage, he saw that the item had torn up the flooring and ripped through his ceiling.
“It was a tremendous sound. It almost hit my son. He was two rooms over and heard it all,” the homeowner, Alejandro Otero, told reporters. “Something ripped through the house and then made a big hole on the floor and on the ceiling.”
“I was shaking. I was completely in disbelief. What are the chances of something landing on my house with such force to cause so much damage?” Otero added. “I’m super grateful that nobody got hurt.”
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