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The batteries had been used on the International Space Station (ISS) for years, and once they were no longer useful, a whole pallet of them was dropped from the ISS. It was going to orbit Earth for a while, but the air friction with the most tenuous layers of the atmosphere would eventually slow it down enough and make it come down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMission controllers in Houston commanded the Canadarm2 robotic arm<\/a> to release an external pallet loaded with old nickel-hydrogen batteries into Earth orbit on Thursday morning. It is safely moving away from the station and will orbit Earth between two to four years before burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere,\u201d NASA wrote in a statement<\/a> back on March 11, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Best laid plans, am I right? The nine batteries were packed on the HTV9 cargo ship that visited the ISS between May and Aug 2020. Despite expectation that the pallet was going to burn, it became clear as it got lower that about half a tonne of the original 2.6 would survive the atmospheric burn, as astronomer Jonathan McDowell reported on Twitter.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Details were also shared by the European Space Agency which was tracking this object.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe total mass of the batteries is estimated at 2.6 metric tonnes, most of which may burn up during the reentry. While some parts may reach the ground, the casualty risk \u2013 the likelihood of a person being hit \u2013 is very low,\u201d a statement<\/a> said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was on a follow-up to McDowell\u2019s first tweet that Alejandro Otero reported that what he believed was a piece of the pallet had crashed through the roof and two floors of his house, almost hitting his son. McDowell assisted Otero, who got in touch with the Aerospace Corporation, and NASA then got in touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “NASA collected an item in cooperation with the homeowner, and will analyze the object at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as soon as possible to determine its origin,” NASA told AFP <\/a>on Tuesday. “More information will be available once the analysis is complete.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n