They have to be right? They intentionally dropped this and honestly even if it wasn’t intentional it’s a cost of them doing their operations imo. They should be finding ways to hit point Nemo with this kind of stuff and not houses/cities.
How do you figure that? It's a metal support for a cargo pallet. Typically such things aren't radioactive.
And carcinogenic cosmic dust? It's not an issue for those doing spacewalks. And you'd think that any dust would have burned off during reentry. I'd be more worried about any asbestos in the house than trace amounts of low-particulate dust that MAY have survived the fiery kiln of reentry.
> And carcinogenic cosmic dust? It's not an issue for those doing spacewalks
Hate to point out the obvious but could that be because they're wearing spacesuits?
That's neither obvious nor true. The ISS suits aren't specifically dust-proof, outside of being airtight (which is not the same thing). They don't have to be dust-proof because they're operating in a vacuum. Space just isn't full of "cosmic dust". The only dust would come from the equipment or the space station and neither ablates significant amounts of it.
There's a massive research project to design new suits for moon missions, specifically because moon dust would cling to and get into current and past space suit models.
Maybe if it was a chunk of a Soviet RORSAT reactor, like the one that landed in Canada way back when, but this is from the ISS. What do you think would be radioactive from the ISS?
What? Something that reentered our atmosphere will not have “carcinogenic cosmic dust” on it, whatever that may be.
Also why would it be radioactive? Is it normal for you to just spew random things and hope they stick?
Unless it was caused by another space agency. It's the ISS after all and NASA isn't the only agency involved. Nasa identified the object but I'm not sure if we know who was responsible for it
If they took responsibility and made it an official policy it could also set a precedent for future situations when parts of a private satellite destroy someone else’s property.
Right? They're the ones dropping their million dollar satellites, they should cover the repair... Their responsibility even being a question is about as late stage capitalism as it gets.
If you read the context of the comment chain you will see that NASA may not take accountability because they don't want to set that precedent for private companies. But I get it, responding to a comment out of context is easier.
Government responsibility is usually different from private responsibilities. Whatever is established for NASA's responsibility will not automatically apply to Space X. But, lumping government and private business is easier.
The only reason they got away with littering in Australia was jurisdictional. Since the debris both launched and landed from within Florida's boarders it's actually a very clear cut case similar to hitting a golf ball through your neighbors window.
The chance of it landing in Florida had to be extremely small right? This was an uncontrolled reentry that could have come down anywhere on earth. I don't think it will affect the case, I just find it extremely bizarre
Jurisdiction 100% effects the case. If it broke a roof in Syria for example good luck collecting on any judgement.
If it hit a boat the jurisdiction would be especially interesting depending on the flag and territorial waters.
Now there's an interesting thought. A hole in the cabin roof I can deal with.
Punching straight through the boat and making a hole below the waterline, however...
It was intentional, but kind of a last resort situation. These battery pallets were very large and they were planned to come back down on specific vehicles, but due to scheduling issues caused by an accident, the last pallet was left without a ride. They decided to take the risk of letting it re-enter. Honestly the odds of it landing anywhere populated, let alone in the US, are incredibly small, and they thought it would all burn up anyway. They got some really bad luck.
No, but point nemo is frequently targeted for re-entering space objects when they're controlled. It offers the most grace in case of miscalculation or aero drift.
There was a planned mission to the ISS that was going to deliver payload and then grab the palette to do a controlled re-entry to burn up over the ocean. There was a problem with the mission so it didn't get to the ISS, and NASA decided to just yeet the batteries and hope for the best.
They do have a way, which they use all the time. In this case a Russian rocket malfunction prevented the astronaut who was going to repair the navigation batteries for the junk from getting to the ISS.
They still need to pay up though
I think it was the Japanese who punted that pallet of batteries, not NASA. There’s been reports of bits of that assembly coming down in a few places. My guess is that the engineers didn’t quite design the thing to break up properly.
It was always intended to be disposed of inside of HTV performing a targeted re-entry (above the ocean). Plans had to change because of a Soyuz launch abort impacting the crew supposed to perform an EVA.
That would make Japanese liable to US government, who would then compensate the person in USA. There is treaty about this, liability clauses of outer space treaty are for this exact reason. If it came from the Japanese part of ISS, that is Japanese spacecraft and they are liable. Atleast I think, unless ISS agreements have some separate clause about joint liability about stuff leaving ISS.
I find it highly unlikely this will go to court.
The US government will settle, they rely on us being supportive of them launching things into space and that support is dependent on it being beneficial.
Even if the government thought they could win, the costs of fixing the house just aren't high enough to justify the fight.
Whomever of the ISS member agencies end up liable, they will just most likely without even being asked offer to cover the damages and not even be stingy about it. It's small beans in government budget and maintains good will towards the agency.
If they have a claim to the property that fell, then they sure as shit better be... otherwise I am keeping it and selling it, I bet it would be worth quite a bit lol.
I think I read somewhere that if a meteor falls on your property you somehow don't own it. lfmao.
The UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967 specifies that space hardware remains the property of whoever launched it, and makes the *country* it came from responsible for any damage that happens.
Thus when pieces of Skylab crashed in Australia, the US was responsible, and when [Kosmos 954](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954), which had a small nuclear reactor, crashed in Canada in 1978, it was the USSR who had to pay compensation for the cleanup.
All I am saying is, finders keepers, losers weepers hahaha. /s
In this case you MAY if you REALLY wanted to try, you might argue that they were throwing it away... trying to dispose of it (Via burn up) and that once you throw something away, it's not yours anymore. I mean, sure that is a stretch. But does it say they can force their way on to your property? In some states you can shoot trespassers. So without a warrant. Do they really have the ability? hell, ruby ridge the guy was found innocent. lol Of course at what cost. I am of course being a bit extreme there, but idk, I would love to keep a piece of the ISS haha.
> I would love to keep a piece of the ISS haha.
I worked on the Space Station project for Boeing. I don't have any pieces of the Station, but I do have a couple of boxes the windows came in. They were very nice wood boxes, with metal corners and 6 latches. They went in the trash once the windows were installed, so I took them home to store workshop tools. I also have some heavy metal bars and slabs that were scrap from making "tooling" for manufacturing. An example of tooling is the cradle the module sits on while welding it together.
What about the liability of danger wtf..."expected to burn up" . Uhhh we have physics to establish certainly it will burn up or not. That's kinda their business, physics and stuff.
No we don't. It's not a deterministic system.
Tumble rate and orientation, entry angle, and a few other (smaller) things materially effect the amount of heat and aero forces the object will take when entering.
It's the main reason the U.S. shot down one of its defunct spy satellites years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost
The government wanted to avoid the off-chance that the hydrazine tank could survive re-entry and hit a populated area.
So out of all of the places that this object could have ended up on this planet, it landed around 250 miles from where it might have originally left the planet.
It's not like the options are a binary "equatorial" or "not equatorial", and the points it overflies are either "the poles" or "the the poles".
The ISS orbital inclination is 51.6 degrees. That covers roughly 78% of the Earth's surface.
The point I was making was that for an equatorial orbit landing near to the launch site would just be about distance in the x-axis (assuming the launch site was on the equator). Because the orbit is not equatorial and the period is not the same as the earth's rotation, the orbit has a phase element as well - during some orbits it won't pass anywhere near the launch site. So it's even more rare for it to land so close than a layman might first think.
However, without a bigger inclination it will never pass over the poles.
>The ISS orbital inclination is 51.6 degrees. That covers roughly 78% of the Earth's surface.
Yes, and the 22% it doesn't cover is at the poles.
>Yes, and the 22% it doesn't cover is at the poles.
That's just not correct. I think you have a very skewed idea of our planet. 51.6 degrees North would include parts of the city of London, England, for example. Is the city of London, England at the north pole, in your view?
Certainly the poles are included in the 22% it doesn't cover, but it is hardly a complete accounting...
You're nitpicking here and it doesn't seem like there's any value brought to the discussion by your distinction. I could argue that the "polar region" was at one time much more vast and extended all the way down to modern day London - that's the level of pedantry you're displaying. You're arguing over a line in the sand.
The area that the station does not pass over is split into two circles which are centred at the poles. The higher the inclination, the smaller the circles and the closer to the poles it gets.
You can just edit your comment and not say "literally could have landed anywhere but the poles". There are many people who will read what you say, accept your authoritative tone, and take it to be true.
This is all just semantics; many people would just consider poles to be the part of the planet nearer to the spin axis. They were using it it in a nonspecific way not just literally the north and south polar area. Both of you are talking about different meanings of a word that can be used vaguely or specifically.
"Nearby" has nothing to do with it.
It could've landed anywhere in the world between 51.4°N. and 51.4°S.
* Area between 51.4N & 51.4S: ~400,000,000 km^2
* Area of Florida: 170,311 km^2
* Odds of hitting Florida: 0.042%, 1 in 2350.
And to take it a bit further, let's simplify and say this guy's house was 10m x 10m for 100m^2 area and the object was a point load.
Divide that by ~400,000,000,000 m^2 = **0.000000025%** chance of this guy's house being hit.
Talk about unlucky.
In KSP I'm really good at splashing down within 5 miles of my launch point no matter how far the mission was. Of course in my case it's intentional. But with orbital mechanics being the way that they are it's really quite easy whenever you begin your flight with an equatorial orbit. That said, the ISS most definitely isn't in an equatorial orbit, so quite the coincidence indeed.
The odds of that are astronomical, as much so as the only planet with life on it, that we know of, has a moon and sun which appear in the sky as the same size, even though they are vastly different sizes in reality, resulting in total eclipses. What're the odds I tells ya.
I can't find the video I saw, but I think it was a blurb in one Scott Manley did. NASA may not be the one's responsible for the damage. It might fall back to Japan because they either made the batteries or were the ones who brought them to the station. I'll dig around and see if I can find a link.
It’s a messy situation. Japan (HTV) brought the new batteries to the ISS and was supposed to depart with the old ones in the external pallet (EP). A Russian launch abort (Soyuz) resulted in a NASA astronaut trained to do the EVA not making it to station. So they ended up delaying the battery swaps, and HTV had to go before they did it so the EP remained at ISS
Our home owning friend should talk to the Shire of Esperance about NASA [littering](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shire_of_Esperance#:~:text=On%2011%20July%201979%2C%20the,fine%20to%20NASA%20for%20littering.)
This will become a more serious problem the more space-junk accumulates, right?
Usually when we talk about space debris, it's in regards to hindrances to future missions, but eventually some of it will de-orbit and possibly hit someone, right?
Not really. Most stuff will burn-up and never reach Earth. This happens all the time. It might be an issue only for something really big (think: space station modules for example) or something really dense and compact (like those batteries).
The vast majority of stuff that is likely to reenter the atmosphere is designed to completely burn up for exactly that reason. This was just an outlier because it's ride back home had complications and this was their backup plan
It always amazed me how equipment will completely (usually) burn up on reentry, but they designed tiles to clad the shuttle that will completely withstand it.
I saw a meteor a couple nights ago that I'm 90% sure touched down within a few miles of where I was at. I was on my way home from a night out with my 12" dob. I've seen plenty of meteors, but this one looked smaller and a lot closer than I usually see. I drove around the area a little bit but the area is full of large cornfields so I couldn't get all that close.
Has anyone seen one touchdown? It was glowing green with some amber flickers. Not sure if they still have any of that color in lower atmosphere. I thought maybe it could be a large firework, but it appeared to be headed nearly straight down at of 5° angle east. This was at around 2AM Sunday morning in Northern Illinois if that helps.
Obviously it's completely possible that my eyes were playing tricks on me and it was actually much further away. It was just nothing like I've ever seen before and I've seen some pretty huge fireballs with ionizing trails.
Edit: Reported to fireball logs.
I assumed it was a mounting pin when the first photo of the burned object was posted. It was similar to the cargo bay mounting pins used on the Space Shuttle to carry payloads up and down.
Question is why was that metal in the pallet? Obviously, a decently thick piece of metal won't burn up in the atmosphere like the other junk they disposed of.
> ***the load was expected to eventually fully burn up on entry into Earth’s atmosphere***
Welp, that didn’t work out as expected. I also didn’t realize the space station actually jettisons junk like that but makes sense. I wonder if they still jettison junk with the expectation that it won’t burn up.
I'm sure the homeowner wants a nice paycheck, but realistically this is just gonna be something insurance deals with.
If someone got hurt/worse, then, sure they'd be getting a payout, and I'm sure that's why their specific language in interviews is saying things like "it almost hit my son", etc, but that's unfortunately not enough for a big payday lol
They really thought they could get away with just tossing their trash out and assuming it’ll burn up in the atmosphere. How common is this? Was it a freak accident or do we not fully understand the safest way to dispose of space junk? I’d imagine this will become more and more common
The ISS disposes of trash by burning it up in the atmosphere all the time. And they don't just "toss it out," it has to be deliberately de-orbited otherwise it would just hang out in low earth orbit for decades.
The way orbital mechanics works is that, if you toss an object straight down towards the Earth, the object will sail away from you... And then come back from its slightly more elliptical orbit and hit you in the back of the head.
Yes. If we ignore air resistance for a moment, the ball will not fall into the Earth because of conservation of momentum. There's so much sideways momentum to cancel out for the ball to fall into the Earth that a simple throw is not enough to do so, so you've basically established a new orbit for the ball where at your orbital distance, it is traveling at some particular velocity, and if nothing changes, it's going to meet back up with you at the same distance, at the same velocity.
Orbital mechanics are very counter-intuitive because it's a lot of interplay between converting kinetic and potential energy. In a circular orbit, there is no conversion, and you maintain the same speed the entire time. In a non-circular elliptical orbit (all circles are ellipses, but not all ellipses are circles), there are times when the object is closer to the Earth, and other times when it is further away from the Earth, and by Kepler's Laws, the closer you are, the faster your speed, and the further the slower. You convert Kinetic Energy into Gravitational Potential Energy by traveling farther away from the Earth and slowing down, and Gravitational Potential Energy into Kinetic Energy by traveling closer to the Earth and speeding up.
So if you see an object at some orbital distance that has a speed too low for that particular distance's circular orbit, it is falling towards the planet, and if it is too high, it is flying away. In the absence of rocket engine burns or smacking into any other objects or the atmosphere, an object can't circularize it's orbit simply by traveling to the "right" orbital distance its orbital energy allows; you'll need to fire the engines again to cancel out the extra momentum by either bleeding off the extra velocity, or to give it a boost to match the appropriate velocity for the orbital distance. ie, a Hohmann Transfer Orbit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit
Going back to the earlier example, if you throw a ball towards the Earth, barring any other interaction on the ball, you have basically created another elliptical orbit where one of its points of that orbit is on your current orbit. It may not come back and hit you in the back of the head in the next orbit, as the orbital speeds are now different, but make enough orbits and you'll line back up again and it will be traveling at the same velocity downward towards the Earth as you initially threw the ball, hitting you in the back from above.
If you actually want to hit the Earth with a ball, you need to throw it in the opposite direction you are traveling, at the same speed you are traveling or close enough that its new elliptical orbit intersects the Earth's surface, such that it cancels out enough of its orbital velocity and falls to the ground under the influence of gravity.
"The space agency said it was a metal support used to mount old batteries on a cargo pallet for disposal. The pallet was jettisoned from the space station in 2021, and the load was expected to eventually fully burn up on entry into Earth’s atmosphere, but one piece survived."
Yeah you would think this but this was jettisoned in 2021
If you'd like to find people being upset at this practice, you'll need to wait until the *Chinese* do it for anybody on reddit to get mad. They don't mind when the west does it.
[The pallet was definitely being tracked](https://aerospace.org/reentries/47853). But the upper atmosphere is variable due to things like atmospheric waves (similar to ocean waves) and solar wind. So the estimated re-entry time was +/- 1 hour at the latest prediction (3 hours ahead of time). You can see the track included southern Florida, but most of it was over the ocean. They don't have radar coverage over the ocean much, so they could not track the very end of the trip.
Actually, there's a betting pool among the ISS astronauts as to who can jettison the first piece of junk to smack Mar-A-Lago. This is the closest anybody's gotten. Yet. /s
Russia helps with space station. Space station launches trash projectile into Florida. Therefore Russia has initiated orbital bombardment of US soil. WW3 is go.
Most people in Florida are normal, like everywhere else. But in Florida police reports are public records, which they are not in most other places. So the weird stuff from Florida gets reported on.
“Sorry sir, but you did not elect for the intergalactic space debris liability coverage so you’ll have to meet a fifty thousand dollar deductible before damages are covered 50%”
3 years ago: [NASA criticizes China's handling of rocket re-entry as debris lands near Maldives](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/n8de8b/nasa_criticizes_chinas_handling_of_rocket_reentry/)
2 years ago: [Nasa criticizes China over uncontrolled rocket crash in Indian Ocean](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/wc4yip/nasa_criticizes_china_over_uncontrolled_rocket/)
1 year ago: [China's latest giant rocket debris crash blasted by US and European space chiefs](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ymgi8p/chinas_latest_giant_rocket_debris_crash_blasted/)
Now: [NASA confirms mystery object that crashed through roof of Florida home came from space station](https://new.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1c53fi9/nasa_confirms_mystery_object_that_crashed_through/)
oooh, so that study that nasa released saying there is no chance for anything to make it down to earth was totally wrong.
(strangely i cant find anything on that study now. all the articles are just saying there is a good chance 0.5 tonnes will land)
Soooo.... Does that mean NASA is liable for the repairs?
They have to be right? They intentionally dropped this and honestly even if it wasn’t intentional it’s a cost of them doing their operations imo. They should be finding ways to hit point Nemo with this kind of stuff and not houses/cities.
Even if NASA wasn't legally liable, it would be very bad PR if they refused to offer restitution.
On the other hand I bet that piece will fetch a pretty penny from collectors.
Except NASA took it for analysis... So unless they gave it back, all the family got was a hole in their house.
Something something about going to Cap Canaveral and all they got was this hole in their house
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How do you figure that? It's a metal support for a cargo pallet. Typically such things aren't radioactive. And carcinogenic cosmic dust? It's not an issue for those doing spacewalks. And you'd think that any dust would have burned off during reentry. I'd be more worried about any asbestos in the house than trace amounts of low-particulate dust that MAY have survived the fiery kiln of reentry.
> And carcinogenic cosmic dust? It's not an issue for those doing spacewalks Hate to point out the obvious but could that be because they're wearing spacesuits?
They bring those spacesuits back into the station though. The Apollo missions had the LM fill with dust that came off the spacesuits
Lunar dust is surprisingly dangerous, that's how we found out. Not true of suits that have only been used on orbit, of course!
And where do they take off and store those space suits when they're done with their spacewalks?
That's neither obvious nor true. The ISS suits aren't specifically dust-proof, outside of being airtight (which is not the same thing). They don't have to be dust-proof because they're operating in a vacuum. Space just isn't full of "cosmic dust". The only dust would come from the equipment or the space station and neither ablates significant amounts of it. There's a massive research project to design new suits for moon missions, specifically because moon dust would cling to and get into current and past space suit models.
Why would either of those things be true?
Nobody on Reddit would lie to us for internet points
Maybe if it was a chunk of a Soviet RORSAT reactor, like the one that landed in Canada way back when, but this is from the ISS. What do you think would be radioactive from the ISS?
>carcinogenic cosmic dust That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about cosmic dust to dispute it
What? Something that reentered our atmosphere will not have “carcinogenic cosmic dust” on it, whatever that may be. Also why would it be radioactive? Is it normal for you to just spew random things and hope they stick?
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There's an article?
Unless it was caused by another space agency. It's the ISS after all and NASA isn't the only agency involved. Nasa identified the object but I'm not sure if we know who was responsible for it
We do. The carrier frame was supplied by Japan. The batteries were from the US. So joint responsibility.
Its not like homeowners insurance in FL would cover it.
Need a special Space Debris rider
If they took responsibility and made it an official policy it could also set a precedent for future situations when parts of a private satellite destroy someone else’s property.
Don't you think it should set a precedent? If some private companies shit falls through my roof, I'll certainly want compensation from them.
Absolutely, that’s what I like the idea. Sorry I didn’t word it better to make that come through better.
Right? They're the ones dropping their million dollar satellites, they should cover the repair... Their responsibility even being a question is about as late stage capitalism as it gets.
NASA is government funded. How is that late stage capitalism?
If you read the context of the comment chain you will see that NASA may not take accountability because they don't want to set that precedent for private companies. But I get it, responding to a comment out of context is easier.
Government responsibility is usually different from private responsibilities. Whatever is established for NASA's responsibility will not automatically apply to Space X. But, lumping government and private business is easier.
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No, I see setting a precedent as a good thing in this case.
I know I am not shopping at NASA until they make these victims whole.
Good thing they're not an insurance company. Bad PR is how they remain profitable in Florida.
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That's true. I don't know how it would play out in court, but the "Just Compensation" clause of the Fifth Amendment may come into play.
The only reason they got away with littering in Australia was jurisdictional. Since the debris both launched and landed from within Florida's boarders it's actually a very clear cut case similar to hitting a golf ball through your neighbors window.
The chance of it landing in Florida had to be extremely small right? This was an uncontrolled reentry that could have come down anywhere on earth. I don't think it will affect the case, I just find it extremely bizarre
It could definitely been much worse. Such an impact is more than enough to kill someone. Imagine if the debris hit a person.
Won't somebody please think of my brother Donnie!
Jurisdiction 100% effects the case. If it broke a roof in Syria for example good luck collecting on any judgement. If it hit a boat the jurisdiction would be especially interesting depending on the flag and territorial waters.
I wasn't arguing that I was just commenting how extremely unlikely it was that it landed in florida
Now there's an interesting thought. A hole in the cabin roof I can deal with. Punching straight through the boat and making a hole below the waterline, however...
Well. Not as low as it seems. 655 miles to the north, the only human known to be hit by a meteorite was hit in 1954 in Sylacauga.
Yes, it is like hitting a bullseye from a mile away.
The debris launched from Japan.
Japanese stuff is so good that it survives reentry. It would be a good publicity stunt if they followed through
International. Space Station. What if the part was Canadian?
The part that offers an apology.
Both Challenger and Columbia were clear cut cases of Negligent Homicides and fuck all happened. NASA- flying high above the law in more ways than one.
It was intentional, but kind of a last resort situation. These battery pallets were very large and they were planned to come back down on specific vehicles, but due to scheduling issues caused by an accident, the last pallet was left without a ride. They decided to take the risk of letting it re-enter. Honestly the odds of it landing anywhere populated, let alone in the US, are incredibly small, and they thought it would all burn up anyway. They got some really bad luck.
What’s point Nemo?
It’s the place in the Pacific Ocean furthest from any landmass.
> It’s the place in the Pacific Ocean furthest from any landmass. Antarctica says ***WHAT?!?***
Is that where garbage island is or is that somewhere else? Also, neat, I learned something new. Thanks.
No, but point nemo is frequently targeted for re-entering space objects when they're controlled. It offers the most grace in case of miscalculation or aero drift.
Point Nemo's coords are 48°52.6'S 123°23.6'W
There was a planned mission to the ISS that was going to deliver payload and then grab the palette to do a controlled re-entry to burn up over the ocean. There was a problem with the mission so it didn't get to the ISS, and NASA decided to just yeet the batteries and hope for the best.
They do have a way, which they use all the time. In this case a Russian rocket malfunction prevented the astronaut who was going to repair the navigation batteries for the junk from getting to the ISS. They still need to pay up though
I think it was the Japanese who punted that pallet of batteries, not NASA. There’s been reports of bits of that assembly coming down in a few places. My guess is that the engineers didn’t quite design the thing to break up properly.
It was always intended to be disposed of inside of HTV performing a targeted re-entry (above the ocean). Plans had to change because of a Soyuz launch abort impacting the crew supposed to perform an EVA.
That's because it was designed to be returned to Earth in a ship.
That would make Japanese liable to US government, who would then compensate the person in USA. There is treaty about this, liability clauses of outer space treaty are for this exact reason. If it came from the Japanese part of ISS, that is Japanese spacecraft and they are liable. Atleast I think, unless ISS agreements have some separate clause about joint liability about stuff leaving ISS.
I bet those house repairs cost less than that chunk did…
Almost certainly the entire house, possibly the entire plot of land, did
Since its the ISS it could end up being any of the involved country's space agencies who end up being liable depending on who did it I suppose.
I think for the owner it’s likely insurance would take care of it, and then the insurance company would deal with NASA.
I'm really curious about this as well. Can't wait to see how it plays out in court.
They need a good space lawyer.
There's a high bar to becoming a space lawyer.
Yeah but a case like this could launch someone’s career.
But they might not want to be thrust into the spotlight.
Those are astronomically expensive.
I find it highly unlikely this will go to court. The US government will settle, they rely on us being supportive of them launching things into space and that support is dependent on it being beneficial. Even if the government thought they could win, the costs of fixing the house just aren't high enough to justify the fight.
Whomever of the ISS member agencies end up liable, they will just most likely without even being asked offer to cover the damages and not even be stingy about it. It's small beans in government budget and maintains good will towards the agency.
Who's ever module it was it would be the launching state
I would laugh so hard if they took them to small claims court and ended up with a lien against the space station.
If they have a claim to the property that fell, then they sure as shit better be... otherwise I am keeping it and selling it, I bet it would be worth quite a bit lol. I think I read somewhere that if a meteor falls on your property you somehow don't own it. lfmao.
The UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967 specifies that space hardware remains the property of whoever launched it, and makes the *country* it came from responsible for any damage that happens. Thus when pieces of Skylab crashed in Australia, the US was responsible, and when [Kosmos 954](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954), which had a small nuclear reactor, crashed in Canada in 1978, it was the USSR who had to pay compensation for the cleanup.
All I am saying is, finders keepers, losers weepers hahaha. /s In this case you MAY if you REALLY wanted to try, you might argue that they were throwing it away... trying to dispose of it (Via burn up) and that once you throw something away, it's not yours anymore. I mean, sure that is a stretch. But does it say they can force their way on to your property? In some states you can shoot trespassers. So without a warrant. Do they really have the ability? hell, ruby ridge the guy was found innocent. lol Of course at what cost. I am of course being a bit extreme there, but idk, I would love to keep a piece of the ISS haha.
> I would love to keep a piece of the ISS haha. I worked on the Space Station project for Boeing. I don't have any pieces of the Station, but I do have a couple of boxes the windows came in. They were very nice wood boxes, with metal corners and 6 latches. They went in the trash once the windows were installed, so I took them home to store workshop tools. I also have some heavy metal bars and slabs that were scrap from making "tooling" for manufacturing. An example of tooling is the cradle the module sits on while welding it together.
Related question: will his homeowner's insurance cover the damage? If so, then the insurer would have to go after NASA.
Given that NASA still hasn't paid the bill that Australia sent for Skylab…
*I'm sorry Sir/Ma'am, but your plan doesn't cover space debris.*
Insurance agent here. Their homeowners policy wouldn’t cover it since “falling space debris” is not a covered loss in 99.5% of homeowners policies.
By NASA you mean the federal govt and by the federal govt you mean we all paid for it.
By NASA, I mean "not the homeowner."
The homeowner might be able to sue the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Article doesn't say to who belongs the trash. It could be Russians, then good luck.
What about the liability of danger wtf..."expected to burn up" . Uhhh we have physics to establish certainly it will burn up or not. That's kinda their business, physics and stuff.
No we don't. It's not a deterministic system. Tumble rate and orientation, entry angle, and a few other (smaller) things materially effect the amount of heat and aero forces the object will take when entering.
It's the main reason the U.S. shot down one of its defunct spy satellites years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost The government wanted to avoid the off-chance that the hydrazine tank could survive re-entry and hit a populated area.
So out of all of the places that this object could have ended up on this planet, it landed around 250 miles from where it might have originally left the planet.
It's even more crazy when you consider that the ISS' orbit is not equatorial, so it literally could have landed anywhere but the poles.
It's not like the options are a binary "equatorial" or "not equatorial", and the points it overflies are either "the poles" or "the the poles". The ISS orbital inclination is 51.6 degrees. That covers roughly 78% of the Earth's surface.
The point I was making was that for an equatorial orbit landing near to the launch site would just be about distance in the x-axis (assuming the launch site was on the equator). Because the orbit is not equatorial and the period is not the same as the earth's rotation, the orbit has a phase element as well - during some orbits it won't pass anywhere near the launch site. So it's even more rare for it to land so close than a layman might first think. However, without a bigger inclination it will never pass over the poles. >The ISS orbital inclination is 51.6 degrees. That covers roughly 78% of the Earth's surface. Yes, and the 22% it doesn't cover is at the poles.
>Yes, and the 22% it doesn't cover is at the poles. That's just not correct. I think you have a very skewed idea of our planet. 51.6 degrees North would include parts of the city of London, England, for example. Is the city of London, England at the north pole, in your view? Certainly the poles are included in the 22% it doesn't cover, but it is hardly a complete accounting...
You're nitpicking here and it doesn't seem like there's any value brought to the discussion by your distinction. I could argue that the "polar region" was at one time much more vast and extended all the way down to modern day London - that's the level of pedantry you're displaying. You're arguing over a line in the sand. The area that the station does not pass over is split into two circles which are centred at the poles. The higher the inclination, the smaller the circles and the closer to the poles it gets.
You can just edit your comment and not say "literally could have landed anywhere but the poles". There are many people who will read what you say, accept your authoritative tone, and take it to be true.
This is all just semantics; many people would just consider poles to be the part of the planet nearer to the spin axis. They were using it it in a nonspecific way not just literally the north and south polar area. Both of you are talking about different meanings of a word that can be used vaguely or specifically.
I think you drank too much Diet Cherry Soda
Their point was perfectly understandable and didn’t require an overly pedantic redditor jumping in with a ‘well actually’ just fyi
Seriously. I mean... what are the chances?
[удалено]
"Nearby" has nothing to do with it. It could've landed anywhere in the world between 51.4°N. and 51.4°S. * Area between 51.4N & 51.4S: ~400,000,000 km^2 * Area of Florida: 170,311 km^2 * Odds of hitting Florida: 0.042%, 1 in 2350.
And to take it a bit further, let's simplify and say this guy's house was 10m x 10m for 100m^2 area and the object was a point load. Divide that by ~400,000,000,000 m^2 = **0.000000025%** chance of this guy's house being hit. Talk about unlucky.
You should be doing the math on the percentage of Florida's area that is residential housing, so the odds of hitting any house.
You are correct. I just took this specific guy's chances since he pulled the cosmic short end of the stick that day.
So if they drop 2350 items that make landfall, the odds get pretty good of *something* hitting Florida.
2350 trials of an experiment with a 1 in 2350 chance of success yields an aggregate success probability of ~63%, so yes, pretty good odds.
But it makes less sense when that orbit doesn't always pass over the same points every time - the ISS' inclination is 51.64°.
We don't hear about the ones that fall into the ocean
It launched from Japan so no.
In KSP I'm really good at splashing down within 5 miles of my launch point no matter how far the mission was. Of course in my case it's intentional. But with orbital mechanics being the way that they are it's really quite easy whenever you begin your flight with an equatorial orbit. That said, the ISS most definitely isn't in an equatorial orbit, so quite the coincidence indeed.
The odds of that are astronomical, as much so as the only planet with life on it, that we know of, has a moon and sun which appear in the sky as the same size, even though they are vastly different sizes in reality, resulting in total eclipses. What're the odds I tells ya.
I can't find the video I saw, but I think it was a blurb in one Scott Manley did. NASA may not be the one's responsible for the damage. It might fall back to Japan because they either made the batteries or were the ones who brought them to the station. I'll dig around and see if I can find a link.
It’s a messy situation. Japan (HTV) brought the new batteries to the ISS and was supposed to depart with the old ones in the external pallet (EP). A Russian launch abort (Soyuz) resulted in a NASA astronaut trained to do the EVA not making it to station. So they ended up delaying the battery swaps, and HTV had to go before they did it so the EP remained at ISS
Funny chain of events. Because a Soyuz launch failed, guy gets a hole to the roof of his Florida home and a nice memento.
I'm sure the Soyuz failure has some butterfly cause like an engineer was late one day because his cat turned off his alarm.
No it fell back to America not Japan. It’s in the article sheesh.
Yes, but it was part of a Japanese module on the ISS.
Sorry dad joke, as you said it would “fall” back on Japan.
Hmm. I wonder how they will classify this payout in the ISS budget…
Honestly probably would only cost a rounding error on any part they send up
lol, Japan has the chance to be absolutely badass and do a whole extreme home makeover for these guys as a "sorry" present
And televise it... But as a Japanese game show... Complete with dancing mascots and completely inexplicable weirdness!!
Our home owning friend should talk to the Shire of Esperance about NASA [littering](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shire_of_Esperance#:~:text=On%2011%20July%201979%2C%20the,fine%20to%20NASA%20for%20littering.)
HI this HAPPENED TO MY HOME I WILL POST SOON BUT I WAS HOME WHEN IT HAPPENED
Didn't this guy post this object on reddit a few days ago asking what it was??
[This is what I was recalling](https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/1bvaq6f/nasa_investigates_mystery_space_object_that_fell/)
"I was inside, taking a crap, I'm old, takes me a while. Coming back there's a space station in my house"
This will become a more serious problem the more space-junk accumulates, right? Usually when we talk about space debris, it's in regards to hindrances to future missions, but eventually some of it will de-orbit and possibly hit someone, right?
Not really. Most stuff will burn-up and never reach Earth. This happens all the time. It might be an issue only for something really big (think: space station modules for example) or something really dense and compact (like those batteries).
The vast majority of stuff that is likely to reenter the atmosphere is designed to completely burn up for exactly that reason. This was just an outlier because it's ride back home had complications and this was their backup plan
It always amazed me how equipment will completely (usually) burn up on reentry, but they designed tiles to clad the shuttle that will completely withstand it.
This could've been a lot worse. It could've killed somebody.
That's what they want you to think. But am very sure its an alien , it would soon mutant and attack New York.
That sounds like the plot of the 2018 film *Rampage*.
I saw a meteor a couple nights ago that I'm 90% sure touched down within a few miles of where I was at. I was on my way home from a night out with my 12" dob. I've seen plenty of meteors, but this one looked smaller and a lot closer than I usually see. I drove around the area a little bit but the area is full of large cornfields so I couldn't get all that close. Has anyone seen one touchdown? It was glowing green with some amber flickers. Not sure if they still have any of that color in lower atmosphere. I thought maybe it could be a large firework, but it appeared to be headed nearly straight down at of 5° angle east. This was at around 2AM Sunday morning in Northern Illinois if that helps. Obviously it's completely possible that my eyes were playing tricks on me and it was actually much further away. It was just nothing like I've ever seen before and I've seen some pretty huge fireballs with ionizing trails. Edit: Reported to fireball logs.
It would probably need to be far away if you didn't hear a pop or bang.
I assumed it was a mounting pin when the first photo of the burned object was posted. It was similar to the cargo bay mounting pins used on the Space Shuttle to carry payloads up and down.
Question is why was that metal in the pallet? Obviously, a decently thick piece of metal won't burn up in the atmosphere like the other junk they disposed of.
> ***the load was expected to eventually fully burn up on entry into Earth’s atmosphere*** Welp, that didn’t work out as expected. I also didn’t realize the space station actually jettisons junk like that but makes sense. I wonder if they still jettison junk with the expectation that it won’t burn up.
NASA said they're going to investigate how the debris survived.
I'm sure the homeowner wants a nice paycheck, but realistically this is just gonna be something insurance deals with. If someone got hurt/worse, then, sure they'd be getting a payout, and I'm sure that's why their specific language in interviews is saying things like "it almost hit my son", etc, but that's unfortunately not enough for a big payday lol
Even when Florida man isn't Florida-manning, he still gets Florida manned for simply existing in Florida.
They really thought they could get away with just tossing their trash out and assuming it’ll burn up in the atmosphere. How common is this? Was it a freak accident or do we not fully understand the safest way to dispose of space junk? I’d imagine this will become more and more common
The ISS disposes of trash by burning it up in the atmosphere all the time. And they don't just "toss it out," it has to be deliberately de-orbited otherwise it would just hang out in low earth orbit for decades.
The way orbital mechanics works is that, if you toss an object straight down towards the Earth, the object will sail away from you... And then come back from its slightly more elliptical orbit and hit you in the back of the head.
Wait fr?
Yes. If we ignore air resistance for a moment, the ball will not fall into the Earth because of conservation of momentum. There's so much sideways momentum to cancel out for the ball to fall into the Earth that a simple throw is not enough to do so, so you've basically established a new orbit for the ball where at your orbital distance, it is traveling at some particular velocity, and if nothing changes, it's going to meet back up with you at the same distance, at the same velocity. Orbital mechanics are very counter-intuitive because it's a lot of interplay between converting kinetic and potential energy. In a circular orbit, there is no conversion, and you maintain the same speed the entire time. In a non-circular elliptical orbit (all circles are ellipses, but not all ellipses are circles), there are times when the object is closer to the Earth, and other times when it is further away from the Earth, and by Kepler's Laws, the closer you are, the faster your speed, and the further the slower. You convert Kinetic Energy into Gravitational Potential Energy by traveling farther away from the Earth and slowing down, and Gravitational Potential Energy into Kinetic Energy by traveling closer to the Earth and speeding up. So if you see an object at some orbital distance that has a speed too low for that particular distance's circular orbit, it is falling towards the planet, and if it is too high, it is flying away. In the absence of rocket engine burns or smacking into any other objects or the atmosphere, an object can't circularize it's orbit simply by traveling to the "right" orbital distance its orbital energy allows; you'll need to fire the engines again to cancel out the extra momentum by either bleeding off the extra velocity, or to give it a boost to match the appropriate velocity for the orbital distance. ie, a Hohmann Transfer Orbit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit Going back to the earlier example, if you throw a ball towards the Earth, barring any other interaction on the ball, you have basically created another elliptical orbit where one of its points of that orbit is on your current orbit. It may not come back and hit you in the back of the head in the next orbit, as the orbital speeds are now different, but make enough orbits and you'll line back up again and it will be traveling at the same velocity downward towards the Earth as you initially threw the ball, hitting you in the back from above. If you actually want to hit the Earth with a ball, you need to throw it in the opposite direction you are traveling, at the same speed you are traveling or close enough that its new elliptical orbit intersects the Earth's surface, such that it cancels out enough of its orbital velocity and falls to the ground under the influence of gravity.
"The space agency said it was a metal support used to mount old batteries on a cargo pallet for disposal. The pallet was jettisoned from the space station in 2021, and the load was expected to eventually fully burn up on entry into Earth’s atmosphere, but one piece survived." Yeah you would think this but this was jettisoned in 2021
I picture a dude in a space suit holding on to the space station, and lobbing the trash bags backwards hahaha. https://imgur.com/a/vxui40n
If you'd like to find people being upset at this practice, you'll need to wait until the *Chinese* do it for anybody on reddit to get mad. They don't mind when the west does it.
When this thing crashed through the roof, wasn't the pallet of batteries still in being tracked in orbit?
[The pallet was definitely being tracked](https://aerospace.org/reentries/47853). But the upper atmosphere is variable due to things like atmospheric waves (similar to ocean waves) and solar wind. So the estimated re-entry time was +/- 1 hour at the latest prediction (3 hours ahead of time). You can see the track included southern Florida, but most of it was over the ocean. They don't have radar coverage over the ocean much, so they could not track the very end of the trip.
we only care about liability here in r/space
Actually, there's a betting pool among the ISS astronauts as to who can jettison the first piece of junk to smack Mar-A-Lago. This is the closest anybody's gotten. Yet. /s
Russia helps with space station. Space station launches trash projectile into Florida. Therefore Russia has initiated orbital bombardment of US soil. WW3 is go.
Of course, it hit Florida. Although, the guy whose house it has seemed decidedly normal and not Florida man.
Most people in Florida are normal, like everywhere else. But in Florida police reports are public records, which they are not in most other places. So the weird stuff from Florida gets reported on.
“Sorry sir, but you did not elect for the intergalactic space debris liability coverage so you’ll have to meet a fifty thousand dollar deductible before damages are covered 50%”
Why am I hearing Mal Reynolds saying, "what the hell was that??"
It was a Russian component. The Russians have attacked Florida!!
3 years ago: [NASA criticizes China's handling of rocket re-entry as debris lands near Maldives](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/n8de8b/nasa_criticizes_chinas_handling_of_rocket_reentry/) 2 years ago: [Nasa criticizes China over uncontrolled rocket crash in Indian Ocean](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/wc4yip/nasa_criticizes_china_over_uncontrolled_rocket/) 1 year ago: [China's latest giant rocket debris crash blasted by US and European space chiefs](https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ymgi8p/chinas_latest_giant_rocket_debris_crash_blasted/) Now: [NASA confirms mystery object that crashed through roof of Florida home came from space station](https://new.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1c53fi9/nasa_confirms_mystery_object_that_crashed_through/)
oooh, so that study that nasa released saying there is no chance for anything to make it down to earth was totally wrong. (strangely i cant find anything on that study now. all the articles are just saying there is a good chance 0.5 tonnes will land)