A Florida man was nearly hit by a piece of space junk when a small metal object tore through the roof of his home.
Alejandro Otero’s son, who was not named, had been relaxing at home on March 8 when a small metal object — that may have been from the International Space Station — came crashing through his Naples house.
“It almost hit my son. He was two rooms over and heard it all,” Otero told Wink News. “I thought a meteorite.
“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 continued. “I’m super grateful that nobody got hurt.”
His home surveillance footage captured the sound of the object crashing through his home around 2:30 p.m.
Otero came home early from vacation after his son called to alert him about the piece that crashed through the home.
The two-pound, man-made object went through two layers of his home and made a “tremendous sound,” the dad revealed. It left a large hole in the floor and ceiling.
Otero said you can “tell by the shape of the top that it traveled in this direction through the atmosphere” due to the burn marks that melted the metal.
Depleted batteries from the ISS were jettisoned back to Earth in 2021 in an unguided reentry after it missed its ride back to Earth, according to Ars Technica.
The International Space Station (ISS) had scheduled debris to be brought back to Earth, with the materials expected to land in the ocean near Cuba and Cancun — but could land near Fort Myers, astronomer Jonathan McDowell posted on X.
Otero replied to his post with photos of the palm-sized object, speculating that it had missed Fort Myers and landed in Naples.
NASA has collected the metal object, according to Ars Technica, and is determining its origin “as soon as possible.”
Most of the 5,800 pounds of debris would have been burned up upon reentering Earth’s atmosphere, with a spokesperson from the Johnson Space Center telling Ars Technica that they did “not expect any portion to have survived reentry.”
However, other agencies like the Aerospace Corporation and the European Space Agency suspected parts would survive, especially the nickel-hydrogen batteries.
However, who is in charge of the debris is unclear. NASA owns the batteries but a Japanese space agency, Jaxa, owns the pallet the debris was launched from.
The Post has reached out to Otero and NASA for comment.
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Alyssa Guzman
