NASA confirms origin of space junk that crashed through Florida home
by Jess Weatherbed from The Verge - All Posts on (#6M3VA)
The four-inch-tall metal object tore through a roof in Naples, Florida, last month. | Image: Alejandro Otero 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 tore through the roof and two floors of a house in Naples on March 8th and established that it came from a cargo pallet of aging batteries that was released from the ISS back in 2021.
More specifically, NASA revealed in a blog post on Monday that the offending object was a support component used to mount the batteries on the 5,800-pound (2,630-kilogram) pallet released from the space station. Made from Inconel (a metal alloy that can withstand extreme environments like high temperature, pressure, or mechanical loads), the recovered...