A Florida family thinks trash dumped from the International Space Station crashed through the roof of their home, nearly hitting a family member inside.
Alejandro Otero says the object weighed about two pounds and crashed through the roof of his Naples home and went through two layers of the ceiling.
"It was a tremendous sound. It almost hit my son. He was two rooms over and heard it all," Otero told WINK-TV.
His first thought was that it was a meteorite but a closer inspection showed that it appeared to be a man-made cylindrical-shaped object.
The crew of the space station had apparently jettisoned a pallet of used batteries.
Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell had been tracking the equipment pallet as it fell and confirmed it was reentering the atmosphere near Florida.
One of the batteries didn't burn up upon reentry and is believed to have hit the home.
NASA said it "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," in a statement to ABC News.
Now Otero hopes to get help to pay for the damage.
A report by Ars Technica said while the batteries were owned by NASA, they were launched by Japan's space agency and that could complicate liability claims, France 24 reported.
"I was shaking. I was completely in disbelief. What are the chances of something landing on my house with such force to cause so much damage," Alejandro said. "I'm super grateful that nobody got hurt."
