Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, was not home when part of a battery pack from the International Space Station crashed through his home on March 8. His son Daniel, 19, was home but escaped injury. NASA has confirmed the 1.6-pound object, made of the metal alloy Inconel, was part of a battery pack jettisoned from the space station in 2021.
An attorney for the Otero family, Mica Nguyen Worthy, told Ars that she has asked NASA for “in excess of $80,000” for non-insured property damage loss, business interruption damages, emotional and mental anguish damages, and the costs for assistance from third parties.
“We intentionally kept it very reasonable because we did not want it to appear to NASA that my clients are seeking a windfall,” Worthy said.
Seems reasonable to me. If I accidentally caused damages to someone’s home, I’d certainly be held liable. But, I’m just some guy.
So it was falling for three years
From my understanding, it was in orbit for three years before reentering our the atmosphere in an uncontrolled descent, then it fell through dude’s roof.
Is this true for everything in orbit though? Like, the ISS is in near earth orbit and so it’s absolutely just falling. But what about things up in a geostationary orbit? What about the moon?
I’m in no way saying that your explanation is wrong, but I wanted to give a more bit-by-bit description so that anyone reading your comment doesn’t speculate or misconstrue how an ejected battery went from “orbit” to “uncontrolled descent”:
Everything we’ve put into that level of orbit is falling, it is just falling so slowly that it keeps missing the earth and only requires tiny bursts of energy to momentarily ascend away from earth. The battery didn’t get that burst of energy so it continued to descend around the earth until the pull of gravity was great enough in comparison to its forward motion that it appeared to go from a spiral to a more dramatic arc.
Once within the atmosphere, friction from the air slowed its forward motion while gravity continued accelerating it in a direction that everyone would agree is “downward.”
Thanks for the detailed explanation! That helps me understand it better myself. So basically, anything we put in orbit ourselves is always going to degrade, which requires routine positioning (i.e., expend some energy to keep the balloon in the air)?
Everything we’ve put into that level of orbit is falling, it is just falling so slowly […] go from a spiral to a more dramatic arc […] Once within the atmosphere
This is not correct.
- Anything in orbit, is constantly free-falling at barely less than 9.8m/s².
- “Orbiting”, is having enough lateral momentum to keep missing the Earth.
- In the absence of an atmosphere, or any other external influence, an object would keep orbiting forever.
- However… Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t just end, it gets thinner and thinner instead… up to the Moon and beyond (thanks to the solar wind blowing it out)
- The reason for an object in LEO to “fall”, as in “decrease its orbital height”, is precisely because it’s been in Earth’s atmosphere all the time!
The reason for a “more dramatic arc”, is that as an objects looses orbital height, it keeps hitting ever denser atmosphere, until it ends up losing enough momentum to not be able to complete an orbit, which precipitates things (pun intended).
See I would have thought nasa would reach out when they heard about it and straight up offered to pay for repairs. This case will surely settle outside of court for between $60k and $100k
I love space stuff and NASA (one of the few truly great things about the US) but they really shouldn’t be yeeting things into orbit and hoping it takes care of itself.
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The owner of a home in southwestern Florida has formally submitted a claim to NASA for damages caused by a chunk of space debris that fell through his roof in March.
NASA has confirmed the 1.6-pound object, made of the metal alloy Inconel, was part of a battery pack jettisoned from the space station in 2021.
“This is truly the first legal claim that is being submitted for recovery for damages related to space debris,” Worthy said.
Officials originally planned to place pallets of the old batteries inside a series of Japanese supply freighters for controlled, destructive reentries over the ocean.
In this case, the negligence could be that NASA miscalculated about the survival of enough debris to damage property on Earth.
Finally, NASA could refuse the claims or make an unacceptable settlement offer—in which case the Otero family could file a federal lawsuit in Florida.
Saved 80% of original text.
80k seems like a lot of our tax dollars for this. But who am I to say.
I imagine it’ll be pretty ballpark after they bargain it down. You start higher than you need to in these negotiations.
