NASA Identifies Metal Object That Crashed Into Florida Home

Last month, a Florida man reported a close call at his home in Naples after a piece of metal fell from the sky and struck his home, narrowly missing his son who was inside the residence at the time.

“It was a tremendous sound,” said Alejandro Otero. “It almost hit my son. He was two rooms over and heard it all. 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? I’m super grateful that nobody got hurt.”

The incident sparked speculation regarding the source of the unidentified object, with most sources suggesting that it likely broke off from the International Space Station, though Otero said his first thought upon hearing of the incident from his son was that a meteorite crashed into his home.

NASA indicated at the time that it had launched an investigation into the matter. 

“The International Space Station will perform a detailed investigation of the jettison and re-entry analysis to determine the cause of the debris survival and to update modeling and analysis, as needed,” the agency explained in a statement. 

The cylindrical object weighed about two pounds and its impact came on the heels of a social media post from astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell about an “equipment pallet” that had re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere somewhere above the Gulf of Mexico. 

The EP-9 equipment pallet reentered at 1929 UTC over the Gulf of Mexico between Cancun and Cuba. This was witih 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

— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) March 8, 2024

Otero replied to McDowell’s post by asserting that among the debris pictured therein was an object that appeared to be the same one that struck his home.

Following an examination of the object at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, NASA issued a statement this week acknowledging that the “mystery object” was a piece of space debris from the ISS.

Specifically, the agency confirmed that the object was “stanchion from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet.”

While the debris had been expected to “fully burn up during entry through Earth’s atmosphere on March 8, 2024,” NASA concluded that this piece “survived re-entry” and crashed into Otero’s home.