2024-04-17 12:51:08
Last month, a rather large piece of metal ripped through the roof and both floors of a two-story home owned by Alejandro Otero in Naples, Florida. A. Otero was on vacation at the time of the incident, but his son was at home.
“It was a huge sound. My son was almost hit. He was two rooms away and heard everything,— A. Otero told the journalist, who first reported on March 8. the incident. – Someone broke into the house and made a big hole in the floor and ceiling. When we heard that, we thought it was impossible – and I immediately thought it was a meteorite.”
According to Ars Technica, the security camera recorded how on March 8 at 2 p.m. 34 min. Florida time, a piece of metal ripped through the house — and it happened around the same time that the US Space Command recorded debris from the ISS once thrown back into the atmosphere.
Garbage made up a block of 2.6 tons, which in 2021 separated from the ISS in March. The unit consisted of old nickel hydride batteries that were discarded when they were replaced with new ones. Normally, such a block would have been returned in a controlled manner, but scheduling conflicts caused by a malfunctioning Russian rocket that was supposed to deliver the batteries caused a domino effect that resulted in the batteries being discarded as part of the largest waste block ever ejected from the ISS.
As the facts show, in 2024 part of that block that reentered the atmosphere in March never burned up.
Having just completed an analysis, NASA said the 0.7kg, 10cm high and 4cm diameter piece of metal was made of Inconel, a nickel-chromium alloy often used in high-temperature applications. The space agency also believes the object was a stand used to attach batteries to the ejection pod – but it’s not sure how it survived the multi-thousand-degree temperatures of re-entry.
“The International Space Station will conduct a detailed study of the ejecta and re-entry to determine why the debris survived and update the modeling and analysis as necessary, – NASA said in a statement. – NASA engineers use engineering models to estimate how objects heat up and decay as they re-enter the atmosphere. These models require detailed input parameters and are regularly updated when debris is determined to have survived reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.”
Observing the reentry of space debris into the atmosphere The European Space Agency added that “large space objects reenter the atmosphere naturally about once a week, and most of the associated fragments burn up before they reach the ground. Most spacecraft, launch vehicles and operational equipment are designed to minimize the risks associated with re-entry into the atmosphere.”
Let’s look at „New Atlas“.
2024-04-17 12:51:08