A piece of space debris from the ISS pierces the roof of a house in Florida. The family is now suing NASA for damages.
According to reports from Sky News, a family from Florida has sued the US space agency NASA because their home was apparently hit by debris that fell to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS).
The Cranfill Sumner law firm, which represents the family, describes the case against NASA as a landmark for future court decisions. It argues that space debris has become a “real and serious problem.”
The ISS debris in question was nine spent batteries from the space station’s power system attached to a cargo pallet. They were originally supposed to return to Earth in one piece aboard a Japanese space freighter. However, due to a series of delays, the package missed the return flight to Earth.
It was therefore deliberately separated from the ISS on March 21, 2021, and has been closely monitored by experts since then. It is the largest piece of space debris ever disposed of in this way.
In March 2024, a piece of a support post used to secure the batteries to a pallet, weighing 1.6 pounds, struck the Otero family home. The law firm alleges that the object smashed into the house, ripping a hole in the roof and floor.
NASA said the pieces fell to Earth after ground controllers used a robotic arm on the space station to release a cargo pallet of “aging batteries” in March 2021. “The hardware was designed to burn up completely upon entry into Earth’s atmosphere on March 8, 2024,” the space agency said, according to Sky News.
The lawyers said their clients were grateful that no one was physically injured. However, they stressed that the situation could have ended “catastrophically.” “If the piece of debris had hit a few feet in a different direction, there could have been serious injury or even a death,” the firm told Sky News.
The family is now demanding compensation of $80,000 (approximately €74,400) to compensate for “the stress and impact this event has had on their lives.”
In Europe, there has now been an agreement to significantly reduce space debris in order to avoid such cases. At the International Aerospace Exhibition (ILA) in Berlin at the beginning of June, numerous companies and organizations in the space industry signed the “Zero Debris Charter”, which was initiated by the European Space Agency ESA.
The charter is intended to lead to the complete avoidance of debris in space and to drastically reduce the creation of space debris in the orbits of the Earth and the Moon by 2030. The signatories include the German Aerospace Industries Association, Airbus Defence and Space and Thales Alenia Space.
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