NASA has confirmed that the object that fell into a Florida home last month was part of a battery pack released from the International Space Station.
This extraordinary incident opens a new frontier in space law. NASA, the homeowner, and attorneys are navigating little-used legal codes and intergovernmental agreements to determine who should pay for the damages.
Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, told Ars he is fairly certain the object came from the space station, even before NASA’s confirmation. The circumstances strongly suggested that was the case. The cylindrical piece of metal tore through his roof on March 8, a few minutes after the time US Space Command reported the reentry of a space station cargo pallet and nine decommissioned batteries over the Gulf of Mexico on a trajectory heading forward the coast of southwest Florida.
On Monday, NASA confirmed the object’s origin after retrieving it from Otero. The agency said in a statement that the object is made of the metal alloy Inconel, weighs 1.6 pounds, and is 4 inches in height and 1.6 inches in diameter.
“As part of the analysis, NASA completed an assessment of the object’s dimensions and features compared to the released hardware and performed a materials analysis,” the agency said. “Based on the examination, the agency determined the debris to be a stanchion from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet.”
A Jolt From the sky
Otero was out of the country when his house came under the crosshairs, but his 19-year-old son was home. The impact sounded like fireworks going off, Otero said in an interview Tuesday. A recording from Otero’s Nest camera captured the noise.
The son “was sitting in front of his computer doing homework with his earphones listening to music, and he was jolted out of his chair with a very loud sound,” Otero said.
After surveying the damage when he got home, Otero filed a police report, and first responders helped pull the object out of the subfloor between the first and second stories of his house. It penetrated the roof and ceiling of an unoccupied second-floor bedroom, then hit the floor between the bed and a bathroom and struck a piece of air conditioning ductwork. It hit so hard that it created a bump on the ceiling of the first floor but didn’t penetrate it, according to Otero.
Something the size and mass of this battery support stanchion would have probably struck the house with a terminal velocity of more than 200 mph (320 km per hour). At that speed, the results could have been deadly.
“Luckily, nobody got hurt,” Otero said.
A quick glance at the object indicated to Otero that it probably came from space. “It’s super dense, a very strong alloy, a very interesting metal,” he said. “When I saw that it was half-charred and that it had a cylindrical shape that had taken a concave shape from traveling through the atmosphere, I knew it had to be coming from outer space.
“I knew it was manmade,” Otero continued. “I just didn’t know where it was from until I started googling.”
Otero said he found Ars’ original article on the reentry on March 8, along with posts about the event on X. That’s when he contacted a local news outlet. WINK News, the CBS affiliate for southwest Florida, was first to report on the damage to Otero’s home. After Otero tried several times to contact NASA officials, an attorney from Kennedy Space Center called him to hear his story. NASA then dispatched someone to pick up the object from Naples.
“This is very unique,” Otero said. “I don’t think I’ve seen or heard, after my own research, any of these events occurring.”
Setting Precedent
By all accounts, this is the first time a piece of space junk has fallen out of orbit and damaged someone’s home, at least in the United States. This means Otero and his attorney, Mica Nguyen Worthy, are entering uncharted legal waters as they prepare to file a claim with NASA for damages.
Otero’s insurance covered damages to his home, but the provider will make a subjugated claim to seek reimbursement, Worthy said. Otero will also file a claim for unspecified non-insured damages, she said.
Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi, said the Federal Tort Claims Act outlines the government’s liability for damages in instances like this one. But Worthy said the laws in this area “may be inadequate.”
“This may be a situation where we have to make the claim and make the law… and we’ll see how NASA responds,” she said. “We have a good rapport with the (NASA) general counsel. Our goal is to make Alejandro whole, but in addition to that, we’re trying to engage in a conversation about what do responsible space operations look like in the international picture.”
An intergovernmental agreement outlines the apportionment of liability among the partner nations on the International Space Station. While the metal fragment that struck Otero’s home was apparently an item from NASA, it was mounted aboard a cargo pallet launched by Japan.
NASA completed a multi-year upgrade of the space station’s power system in 2020 by installing a final set of new lithium-ion batteries to replace aging nickel-hydrogen batteries that were reaching end-of-life. Officials originally planned to place pallets of the old batteries inside a series of Japanese supply freighters for controlled destructive reentries over the ocean.
But a series of delays meant the final cargo pallet of old batteries missed its ride back to Earth, so NASA jettisoned the batteries from the space station in 2021 to head for an unguided reentry. Ars published details of the circumstances that led to this in a previous story.
This isn’t the way NASA prefers to get rid of space debris, but managers decided they couldn’t keep the pallet at the space station, where it took up a storage location needed for other purposes. NASA expected the roughly 5,800 (2.6-metric ton) battery pallet to fully burn up during reentry.
But Otero’s experience shows that was not the case, and it’s possible other fragments may have fallen in the Gulf of Mexico or in unpopulated areas of southwest Florida. NASA said it will “perform a detailed investigation of the jettison and reentry analysis to determine the cause of the debris survival and to update modeling and analysis, as needed.”
The European Space Agency (ESA) also monitored the trajectory of the battery pallet last month. At the time, ESA concluded that “some parts may reach the ground.”
“NASA specialists use engineering models to estimate how objects heat up and break apart during atmospheric reentry,” the agency said in a statement Monday. “These models require detailed input parameters and are regularly updated when debris is found to have survived atmospheric reentry to the ground.”
The agency said it remains committed to “mitigating as much risk as possible to protect people on Earth when space hardware must be released.”
A Low but Non-Zero Risk
Predicting where and when something will reenter the atmosphere is also full of uncertainty. Fluctuations in the density of the upper atmosphere continually increase or decrease the amount of aerodynamic drag affecting an object in low orbit. Space Command, which tracks roughly 50,000 objects in orbit, narrowed its reentry prediction for the battery pallet from six hours to four hours shortly before it actually fell out of orbit.
The battery pallet’s track was well-established, so officials knew the exact parts of the planet it would fly over during the reentry window. But in six hours, the object would complete four orbits of Earth. The pallet’s track in the six-hour window Space Command released early on the day of reentry took it over all six populated continents.
Otero told Ars he hopes the incident fosters an “intelligent” conversation about the risk of falling space debris without sensationalizing it. According to ESA, the risk of a person getting hit by a piece of space junk is about 65,000 times lower than the risk of being struck by lightning. The series of events that led to a chunk of metal falling from space through Otero’s roof was a “perfect storm,” he said.
“Because of this incident, it’s really raised the awareness that it’s not theoretical that these objects can make it to the ground … and potentially cause damage,” Worthy said.
“I don’t think we are entering a period where we need to start worrying about space junk hitting us every time we go outside, but we should definitely get used to these stories,” Hanlon told Ars in an email.
One of the most well-known reentry debris incidents occurred in 2003 when a piece of the doomed space shuttle Columbia smashed through the roof of a dentist’s office in Texas. Fortunately for those who worked there, the Columbia accident happened on a Saturday when the office was closed. The Columbia accident differs from Otero’s experience because the shuttle was flying back to Earth for a controlled reentry.
A person in Oklahoma was hit by a lightweight piece of material in 1997 that experts linked to the reentry of the upper stage from a Delta II rocket. It was a glancing blow, and the air helped slow down the piece of debris, so she escaped injury. There was also an incident in 1969 when a fragment from a Soviet spacecraft reportedly hit a small Japanese ship near the coast of Siberia, injuring five people.
When a large Chinese Long March 5B rocket fell out of orbit in 2020, wreckage damaged a village in the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire. The Long March 5B is a frequent offender of debris because its massive core stage makes it all the way into orbit, an unusual design feature for a rocket. This booster then comes back into the atmosphere unguided. Four Long March 5Bs have been launched to date, with more flights planned in the coming years.
“We know that NASA does modeling on their orbital debris reentry, but we don’t know what other countries are doing,” Worthy said. “We’re in this new renaissance of space operations.”
“Should there be some kind of alert system for the general public?” Worthy said. “Those are the kinds of questions Alejandro and I have been asking ourselves and talking to NASA about.”
The Manchester United midfielder was directly involved in seven goals in only five appearances, with two of his goals being great long-range efforts. Only in one match did he fail to score or assist.
The centre-back made his mark at both ends of the pitch as Manchester City won all five matches in the title race. He scored and assisted against Luton Town, got the opening goal at Nottingham Forest, and contributed to two clean sheets.
The Arsenal star had a hand in seven goals as his team won five of their six April matches. Only in two of six appearances did Havertz not score or set up a goal.
Crystal Palace’s striker scored five goals in six outings, netting against Man City before getting braces in back-to-back wins over West Ham United and Newcastle United.
Palmer led the league for goals (seven) and goal involvements (eight) despite making only four appearances. He scored a hat-trick in a 4-3 win over Man Utd that included equalising and winning goals in second-half stoppage time, before netting four times in a 6-0 victory over Everton that moved him level with Erling Haaland in the race for the Castrol Golden Boot.
Everton’s goalkeeper kept four clean sheets in six matches to help his team secure safety. He was made to work for his shutouts, too, making 23 saves, the third-most in April, with seven of them coming in the victory over Liverpool, Everton’s first home Merseyside derby win since 2010.
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Here’s what to expect during Boeing Starliner’s 1st astronaut test flight on May 6 – Space.com
HOUSTON — A busy week is ahead of the first Starliner astronauts after their scheduled launch on May 6.
Astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams will be the first NASA crew to fly to space aboard Boeing Starliner. Their mission, known as Crew Flight Test, will run for about a week at the International Space Station (ISS) to certify Starliner for future missions to last six months or so.
Boeing and SpaceX received contracts from NASA in 2014 for commercial crew missions to the ISS. Boeing’s contract for the Starliner is valued at $4.2 billion, compared to SpaceX’s $2.6 billion. Despite the lower contract amount, SpaceX beat Boeing to the space station and has been running operational ISS missions since 2020. Starliner ran two uncrewed test flights in 2019 and 2022, but astronaut flights were delayed due to several technical problems that officials say are all resolved now.
There are several key milestones to look for after the Starliner astronauts launch to space at Cape Canaveral, near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) near Orlando, Florida. The teams shared those milestones with reporters during a media tour here, at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, on March 22. Here are some of the big events of the mission that the astronauts and their support teams on the ground will be getting ready for.
Illustration of Boeing Starliner launching on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. (Image credit: Boeing)
The final hours before launch of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will be busy, NASA Starliner flight director Mike Lammers told reporters during a briefing at JSC. The crew will suit up in their quarantine facility at KSC and do the traditional crew walkout outside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building. They will arrive at the pad 2 hours and 15 minutes before launch and go inside Starliner.
The spacecraft will be transferred to internal power at 80 minutes before launch, and ground teams will then do a leak check on the spacecraft 50 minutes before launch. Next, the crew access arms will be retracted 11 minutes before launch.
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The last four minutes will be particularly busy, with numerous callouts, but a notable one is when the launch abort system will be armed about 75 seconds before launch.
“It’s already been a busy day, but then we have liftoff. That’s where my real work starts,” Lammers said, noting this will be the first crewed ascent flown out of Mission Control at JSC since the final space shuttle mission, STS-135, in 2011. (SpaceX has its own mission control operations in Hawthorne, California.)
This artist’s illustration shows the special “aeroskirt” that will help smooth the Boeing Starliner capsule’s ride to space on Dec. 20, 2019. The white, 70-inch (178 centimeters) aeroskirt is integrated into the Launch Vehicle Adapter, which links Starliner with its Atlas V rocket’s Centaur upper stage. (Image credit: ULA)
Atlas V is equipped with two solid rocket boosters or SRBs. Shortly after leaving the pad, the rocket will begin maneuvering to adjust its trajectory towards orbit. The SRBs will burn for about 90 seconds, and once spent, their empty casings will keep riding with the core stage until 2.5 minutes after launch. They will be then released and Atlas V will continue its first-stage burn until four minutes after launch.
“There’s about a 15-second pause as the first stage separates [a] cover that covers a docking system,” Lammers explained. Atlas V will also discard a special “aeroskirt,” a 70-inch-long (178 centimeters) structure integrated into the Launch Vehicle Adapter that links Starliner up with the Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage.
Then the second stage will light, with two RL-10 engines on that Centaur stage bringing the crew into space. The second stage will shut off 12 minutes after launch, and the spacecraft will separate 15 minutes after launch.
“We’re suborbital still here,” Lammers continued, “so we’ve got to do another burn.” The burns for orbit will happen twice, at 31 minutes and at 1 hour and 15 minutes into the mission. Next will come the approach and docking to ISS.
If necessary, several abort sites will be on standby underneath the launch path: The pad area around Florida; an ocean zone east of Cape Cod in the Atlantic Ocean; a second ocean zone further east near St. John’s, Newfoundland; and the ocean west of Shannon, Ireland.
ISS cruise
Illustration of Boeing Starliner in space with Earth in the background. (Image credit: Boeing)
Once the launch is finished, NASA flight director Ed Van Cise joked at the same press conference, one would think it would be “a great, relaxing ride to the space station.”
While operational missions aim to be that way, that cannot the case for the first Starliner as the astronauts will be doing tests for both nominal scenarios, and off-nominal scenarios.
“We’re be doing things like purposely pointing it in an orientation that’s say, not exactly the normal orientation for the mission, and then having the crew manually fly the spacecraft back into the direction it should be pointing,” he said. “We also want to make sure that if for some reason the vehicle doesn’t know where the communication satellites are located, that crew can manually fly the spacecraft to point the antennas at the satellite.”
The astronauts will also “trick” the spacecraft “into thinking that it doesn’t know where it is in space,” Van Cise said, after which the crew will manually fly the spacecraft using a star tracker. The stars would be used to rebuild the navigation system of Starliner if anything were to go awry.
On top of these tests will be checkouts of avionics and thrusters, and having the crew do far more manual flying than required during a normal mission. The orientation of the spacecraft will also be changed to point Starliner’s solar arrays towards the sun, to practice the procedure for recharging batteries if ever needed.
Following a crew sleep period, Wilmore and Williams will be roughly 1,240 miles (2,000 km) from the ISS and will then make a rendezvous and docking.
Illustration of Boeing Starliner approaching the International Space Station for a docking. (Image credit: Boeing)
Starliner must approach the ISS within a seven-degree angle of safety. The spacecraft is designed to dock autonomously, but Williams and Wilmore are also trained to take over manually should that be needed.
“During approach, rendezvous, and docking with the station, the Starliner team will assess spacecraft thruster performance for manual abort scenarios, conduct communication checkouts, test manual and automated navigation, and evaluate life support systems. Crew aboard the station will monitor the spacecraft’s approach and the Starliner crew would command any necessary aborts,” NASA officials wrote of the procedure.
“Starliner will autonomously dock to the forward-facing port of the Harmony module,” the agency added. “The test objective is to perform hatch opening and closing operations, configure the spacecraft for its time docked to the station, and transfer emergency equipment into the station.”
ISS mission
“Our main goals of the docking mission are … practice and validate the plan operations for long-duration missions,” NASA flight director Vincent LaCourt said at the same press conference at JSC. The crew will also practice for contingencies and perform cargo operations.
The first hours after docking will include opening the hatches, going on to the space station and performing a welcome ceremony that will run on NASA Television. The ISS crew will then give the Starliner astronauts a safety briefing, and the approximately one-week mission will begin.
On the second day of docking, all the cargo will be unloaded and Starliner will be put into a “quiescent” mode, meaning extra computers will be powered off while essential equipment like lights, displays and ventilation will run as needed.
Boeing’s Starliner space capsule docked at the International Space Station during a 2022 uncrewed test flight. (Image credit: ESA)
Day 3 of docking will be a “safe haven” practice. The Starliner crew will practice an emergency run to their spacecraft, including a power-up, in case of future ISS situations that may need them (like a meteorite strike or fire.) Since operational crews would have four astronauts and not two, Wilmore and Williams will “borrow” two ISS crew members to join them.
“We’ll go into Starliner, they’ll close the hatch [and] basically completely power up the vehicle on their own to practice if they’re getting ready for an emergency undock and return,” LaCourt said.
On Day 4 of docking, the crew will do a complete power-up of Starliner and make sure the equipment is working. From there, the mission plan may change depending on how long Starliner remains docked at the station.
While the crew could leave as early as Day 8 of docking, extra days on the mission would allow them to pick up ISS tasks to help the main crew — and take some extra time off to rest ahead of landing. Before undocking, the crew will do a farewell event on television, don their spacesuits and close the hatch for departure.
Undocking, re-entry and landing
Illustration of Boeing Starliner streaking through Earth’s atmosphere with fiery trails visible. (Image credit: Boeing)
Undocking will be timed for 6.5 hours after landing, with the crew expected to move to the zenith of the ISS before turning on the engines for a departure burn.
Unlike a normal mission, the crew will briefly take manual control of the spacecraft during the cruise home to continue testing. “I like to call [this] stick and rudder flying; in fact, they can even deorbit and land in that mode,” Lammers said. The crew will evaluate how the spacecraft performs in manual operations, and how that compares with the simulators in which they practiced procedures before the launch.
After a couple of orbits of Earth, the crew will finally execute a deorbit burn over the Pacific Ocean. Starliner’s primary landing zone is White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, with two backup areas available: Willcox Playa east of Tucson, Arizona and Dugway Proving Ground west of Salt Lake City.
Boeing’s Starliner space capsule touching down after a successful test flight in 2022. (Image credit: NASA)
The prime landing time is at night due to weather constraints. The main constraints are low winds that are less than 10 knots and cool temperatures to protect the landing teams that will be wearing special safety suits to protect against potential leaks on the spacecraft, Lammers said. Infrared tracking and lighting will help with the darkness.
The crew will point their heat shield at the atmosphere for re-entry. Around 30,000 feet (9 km) high, the crew will jettison that heat shield and then deploy their parachute drogues. The three main chutes will deploy at 8,000 feet (2.5 km). Touchdown will happen in the desert, shortly after the airbags deploy.
A landing team will be on site, roughly 3 miles (5 km) away to avoid any falling pieces from the spacecraft. The astronauts will throw a switch to jettison their chutes, as the landing team makes their approach. Once the landing team arrives at the spacecraft, they will do brief safety check and then remove the crew. Both astronauts will be assessed medically in the field before being flown back to Houston for normal post-flight medical checks, debriefings and operations.
What’s next
NASA astronauts Suni Williams (left) and Mike Fincke at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, backdropped by the Vehicle Assembly Building. Williams is on Crew Flight Test, while Fincke will command Starliner-1. (Image credit: NASA)
The first operational mission for Starliner, known as Starliner-1, is set for early 2025 at the earliest. The crew for that mission is NASA’s Scott Tingle, NASA’s Mike Fincke and the Canadian Space Agency‘s Joshua Kutryk and they are already deep in training. (Kutryk will also serve as capcom for the launch phase of CFT.)
Boeing is then expected to run regular Starliner missions to the ISS, alongside SpaceX. Currently the commercial crew program aims to bring one astronaut crew to the orbiting complex every six months. Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft also does the same, occasionally with NASA astronauts on board for technical and policy reasons.
The ISS is currently expected to host missions until 2030, unless upcoming commercial space stations are not yet ready. Russia has committed to missions until at least 2028, but also may extend that partnership.
As for missions outside the ISS, Boeing officials have said they want to focus on NASA obligations first before considering private Starliner missions.
How will solar storms affect future Mars astronauts? That’s what two NASA spacecraft are hoping to find out – Sky at Night Magazine
As the Sun becomes more active, more solar storms occur on its surface, releasing powerful bursts of radiation that hit the planets of the Solar System.
Earth has a magnetic field that, for the most part, shields us from the extreme effects of solar storms, but Mars lost its global magnetic field long ago, so how can future astronauts on Mars hope to be protected?
The Sun goes through an 11-year cycle of peaks and troughs of activity, known as the Solar Cycle, and is currently approaching a peak, throwing out more solar flares and sunspots.
This, says NASA, makes now an ideal time for two of its spacecraft to study how solar flares could affect robotic probes and human astronauts on the Mars.
Curry is principal investigator for NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) spacecraft, which orbits the Red Planet to understand more about its upper atmosphere.
“I’d actually love to see the ‘big one’ at Mars this year — a large event that we can study to understand solar radiation better before astronauts go to Mars.”
Artist’s impression of NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter. Credit: NASA/GSFC Full Image Details
MAVEN and Curiosity
The MAVEN orbiter collects data on a range of phenomena as it orbits Mars, including radiation and solar particles.
And data from the Curiosity rover’s Radiation Assessment Detector, or RAD, reveals how radiation breaks down carbon-based molecules on the surface.
This process could affect whether signs of ancient microbial life are still on Mars to this day.
Curiosity’s RAD instrument has also given planetary scientists data that could reveal whether astronauts might be able to hide from radiation on Mars by using caves, lava tubes or cliff faces for protection.
The Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) on NASA’s Curiosity will study radiation on the Martian surface during solar maximum. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
What happens when a solar flare strikes
When a solar event occurs, scientists analyse the quantity of solar particles released, and how energetic they are.
“You can have a million particles with low energy or 10 particles with extremely high energy,” says RAD’s principal investigator, Don Hassler of the Boulder, Colorado, office of the Southwest Research Institute.
“While MAVEN’s instruments are more sensitive to lower-energy ones, RAD is the only instrument capable of seeing the high-energy ones that make it through the atmosphere to the surface, where astronauts would be.”
Coordination between MAVEN in Mars orbit and Curiosity on the ground is key.
MAVEN detects a solar flare and Curiosity scientists observe RAD’s data to look out for changes.
MAVEN also uses an early warning system to let other Mars spacecraft teams know when radiation levels begin to rise.
This means other teams can switch off instruments that could be damaged by solar flares.
How will solar flares affect astronauts on Mars? Credit: Mark Stevenson/Stocktrek Images
How did Mars lose its water?
Studying the effects of solar maximum on Mars could reveal why ancient Mars was warm and wet like Earth, but is now a freezing, barren wasteland.
When Mars is closest to the Sun, its atmosphere heats up and this causes dust storms to occur on the surface. These storms can even become global.
Could global dust storms be responsible for ejecting water vapour high above Mars, where the atmosphere gets stripped away during solar storms?
Perhaps this could explain why Mars lost its water.
If a global dust storm occurred at the same time as a solar storm, it would make for a good opportunity to test the theory.
