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WG3K   > ANS      15.04.24 10:27l 113 Lines 6094 Bytes #14 (0) @ AMSAT
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Subj: Trash From The ISS May Have Hit A House In Florida
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A few weeks ago, something from the heavens came crashing through the roof
of Alejandro Otero窶冱 Florida home, and NASA is on the case.

Otero wasn窶冲 home at the time. A Nest home security camera captured the
sound of the crash at 2:34 pm local time (19:34 UTC) on March 8. That窶冱 an
important piece of information because it is a close match for the
time窶�2:29 pm EST (19:29 UTC)窶杯hat US Space Command recorded the reentry of
a piece of space debris from the space station. At that time, the object
was on a path over the Gulf of Mexico, heading toward southwest Florida.

*In all likelihood, this nearly 2-pound object came from the International
Space Station. Otero said it tore through the roof and both floors of his
two-story house in Naples, Florida. (Photo by Alejandro Otero on X) *

This space junk consisted of depleted batteries from the ISS, attached to a
cargo pallet that was originally supposed to come back to Earth in a
controlled manner. But a series of delays meant this cargo pallet missed
its ride back to Earth, so NASA jettisoned the batteries from the space
station in 2021 to head for an unguided reentry.

NASA has recovered the debris from the homeowner, according to Josh Finch,
an agency spokesperson. Engineers at NASA窶冱 Kennedy Space Center will
analyze the object 窶彗s soon as possible to determine its origin,窶� Finch
told Ars. 窶廴ore information will be available once the analysis is
complete.窶�

The entire pallet, including the nine disused batteries from the space
station窶冱 power system, had a mass of more than 2.6 metric tons (5,800
pounds), according to NASA. Size-wise, it was about twice as tall as a
standard kitchen refrigerator. It窶冱 important to note that objects of this
mass, or larger, regularly fall to Earth on guided trajectories, but
they窶决e usually failed satellites or spent rocket stages left in orbit
after completing their missions.

In a post on X, Otero said he is waiting for communication from 窶徼he
responsible agencies窶� to resolve the cost of damages to his home. 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, according
to Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law
at the University of Mississippi.

窶廬t gets more interesting if this material is discovered to be not
originally from the United States,窶� she told Ars. 窶廬f it is a human-made
space object which was launched into space by another country, which caused
damage on Earth, that country would be absolutely liable to the homeowner
for the damage caused.窶�

This could be an issue in this case. The batteries were owned by NASA, but
they were attached to a pallet structure launched by Japan窶冱 space agency.

NASA typically doesn窶冲 want large chunks of space debris falling to Earth
with an uncontrolled reentry. You can trace the reason this object came
down unguided back to a Russian launch failure more than five years ago.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian commander Alexey Ovchinin aborted
their launch on a Soyuz spacecraft when their rocket failed shortly after
liftoff.

One of Hague窶冱 jobs at the International Space Station would have been to
go outside on spacewalks to help install a new set of lithium-ion batteries
recently delivered by a Japanese HTV cargo ship. But Hague didn窶冲 reach the
station in 2018, so NASA put off the spacewalks until a new team of
astronauts arrived at the complex.

This interruption to the space station窶冱 carefully choreographed schedule
threw off the entire multiyear plan for upgrading the batteries on the
outpost窶冱 electrical system. Instead of putting the old batteries back into
the HTV for a guided destructive reentry over the open ocean, NASA held
onto the cargo pallet at the station when the HTV supply ship needed to
depart.

Each of the subsequent HTV missions delivered more fresh batteries to the
space station and then departed the complex with the cargo pallet and
decommissioned batteries from the previous HTV mission. That was the case
until there were no more HTVs to fly. Japan窶冱 last HTV spacecraft departed
the ISS in 2020 with the cargo pallet and batteries from the prior flight,
stranding the last battery pallet at the station.

The space station窶冱 other cargo vehicles窶粘paceX窶冱 Dragon, Northrop
Grumman窶冱 Cygnus, and the Russian Progress窶把an窶冲 accommodate the HTV cargo
pallet.

So NASA decided to jettison the battery pallet using the space station窶冱
robotic arm in March 2021 in order to free up real estate on the lab.
Without any propulsion of their own, the batteries were adrift in orbit for
three years until aerodynamic drag finally pulled the pallet back into the
atmosphere on March 8, almost exactly three years later.

It is notoriously difficult to predict where a piece of space junk will
reenter the atmosphere. US Space Command precisely tracks tens of thousands
of objects in Earth orbit, but the exact density of the upper atmosphere is
still largely an unknown variable. Even a half-day before the reentry, US
Space Command窶冱 estimate for when the battery pallet would fall to Earth
had a window of uncertainty spanning six hours, enough time for the object
to circle the planet four times.

And if you don窶冲 know when something will reenter the atmosphere, you can窶冲
predict where it will come down.

If NASA confirms the projectile that fell through Otero窶冱 house last month
came from the ISS, it would join a small handful of incidents when an
object falling out of orbit damaged someone窶冱 property.

Earth is a big place. It窶冱 fairly common for someone to find a piece of
fallen space junk in a field or washed up on a beach. But it is rare for a
reentry to hit a structure or injure a person.

Falling space debris has never killed anyone. According to ESA, the annual
risk of an individual human being injured by space debris is less than 1 in
100 billion.

[ANS thanks ARS Technical for the above information. Read the entire story
at https://bit.ly/3xFJs9W.]


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