NASA is investigating where a chunk of metal that smashed into a Florida house came from

• A piece of metal tore through the roof of a Florida home last month.

• It may have been part of an "equipment pallet" that the International Space Station discarded.

• The homeowner could receive compensation if the object came from the ISS.

NASA is investigating after a resident of southern Florida said an object that fell from space badly damaged his home.

Alejandro Otero was away on vacation on the afternoon of March 8 when his son called to say something had smashed into the house in Naples.

The object "ripped through the house and then made a big hole on the floor and on the ceiling," Otero told WINK News. "Immediately I thought a meteorite."

"It almost hit my son," he added.

Otero returned home to find a cylindrical object a few inches long and weighing about 2 lbs.

Just five minutes before the house was damaged, an "equipment pallet" from space had reentered Earth's atmosphere over the Gulf of Mexico, Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said on X.

He was tracking the planned disposal of three tons of space junk from the ISS that fell to Earth in an unguided reentry on March 8.

The pallet was a "little to the northeast" of its intended path and would have reached Fort Myers — about an hour's drive from Naples — if it had reentered the atmosphere a couple of minutes later, McDowell said on X.

Most space debris vaporizes as it plummets through the atmosphere and reaches temperatures of up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but that depends on how big it is and what it's made of.

Replying to a question on X about whether the space junk would burn up, McDowell said, "Partly, but some bits of battery casing will survive."

The European Space Agency said: "While some parts may reach the ground, the casualty risk — the likelihood of a person being hit — is very low."

At the time of the incident, Otero said he had contacted NASA about the damage but hadn't received a response. The agency subsequently contacted him.

A NASA representative told Business Insider: "NASA collected an item in cooperation with the homeowner, and will analyze the object at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida as soon as possible to determine its origin. More information will be available once the analysis is complete."

If it's from the space station, Otero could be eligible for compensation. But if the object is foreign-made, his claim could be more complicated, Michelle Hanlon, the executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi, told Ars Technica.

Correction: April 3, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the date the debris fell onto Otero's house and the date McDowell was tracking the space junk. Both happened on March 8, not March 9.

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