Florida man may have to ‘sue Japan’ after space junk almost hit his son

A man from Florida may have to sue Japan after rubbish from the International Space Station (ISS) crashed through his house.

Well, Japan’s space agency anyway.

That’s a lot to take in, let’s take a beat.

Unsurprisingly, there is limited space for garbage on the ISS, meaning teams on board regularly throw their rubbish out into space, where it falls to Earth and burns up in the atmosphere.

At least that’s the plan.

But last month, they dropped a pallet of used batteries – the heaviest trash dump yet – and it seems some of it survived the fiery re-entry over the Gulf of Mexico.

Alejandro Otero believes part of the pallet plummeted through the roof of his home in Naples, Florida, narrowly missing his son.

Sharing security footage on X, formerly Twitter, which captured the sound of the falling debris, Mr Otero said: ‘Looks like one of those pieces… landed in my house in Naples. 

‘Tore through the roof and went through two floors. Almost hit my son.’

Pictures of the damage show broken roof tiles where it punched a hole into the house, a hole in the ceiling, broken floorboards and the debris itself, a small, metal cyclinder roughly 10cm long and 4cm wide.

Speaking to WINK news, Mr Otero said: ‘I was shaken, I was completely in disbelief – what are the chances of something landing on my house with such force, to cause so much damage?

‘Obviously I’m super grateful no one got hurt.’

On X, Mr Otero shared pictures of the incident with astronomer and astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell who had been tracking the debris – officially known as the EP-9 equipment pallet – as it fell.

‘The EP-9 equipment pallet reentered at 1929 UTC [2.29pm Florida time] over the Gulf of Mexico between Cancun and Cuba,’ he said

‘This was within 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 [Florida].’

Mr Otero added that he had been unable to contact Nasa to discuss repairing the damage to his property, to which Dr McDowell replied: ‘Nasa are not the right people to contact. I have passed [this on] to the experts at the Aerospace Corporation who study this sort of thing.’

The debris came to rest after punching through the floorboards (Picture: Alejandro Otero)

However, a Nasa spokesperson told Ars Technica that Nasa will analyse the object ‘as soon as possible to determine its origin. More information will be available once the analysis is complete.’

Here’s where it gets really interesting.

According to Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi, Nasa may not be liable for the damage.

‘If it is a human-made space object which was launched into space by another country, which caused damage on Earth, that country would be absolutely liable to the homeowner for the damage caused,’ she said, speaking to Ars Technica.

The heavy, metal cyclinder that crashed through Alejandro Otero’s house (Picture: Alejandro Otero)

In this case, the batteries were owned by Nasa, but the pallet was made by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa), meaning they Mr Otero may need lodge his claim with Japan.

Luckily, for many reasons, damage from falling space debris is very rare. Most things that crash into Earth do not survive the journey, instead burning up on re-entry.

If they do make it through, luckily the planet is very, very big, so the chances of it colliding with people or property are very slim. The European Space Agency (ESA) estimates the risk of a person being hit by space debris at less than one in 100 billion every year.

Trash from the International Space Station (ISS) is launched back to Earth (Picture: Getty)

Near misses have happened however, including in December when both side boosters from a Chinese Long March 3B rocket fell over Guangxi in the south of the country. One was filmed exploding in a fireball as it fell into woodland, but the other crashed just metres from a house.

In 2022, a huge piece of debris from a SpaceX rocket landed in a farmer’s field in Jindabyne, New South Wales, Australia. 

And in 1997, Lottie Williams was struck on the shoulder by a piece of metal while walking in a park in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Although never 100% verified as space debris, Nasa confirmed the timing and location was consistent with the path of a Delta rocket as it broke up over the country, making Ms Williams the only person thought to have been hit by falling space junk.

Luckily it was only a glancing blow, and she lived to tell the tale.