Family Sues NASA In Unprecedented Case After Piece Of ISS Smashes Into Their House

A family in Florida has launched a lawsuit against NASA, seeking compensation after a piece of space junk fell from the sky and crashed through the roof of their house. Fortunately, no one was injured in the incident, although the family’s lawyer says the ramifications of this case go far beyond mere damage reparation and could set a precedent for how future claims of this sort are resolved.

A significant increase in rocket launches and space operations in the last few years has seen a massive rise in debris floating around in Low Earth Orbit, heightening the risk of collisions in space and potentially posing a danger to those on the ground. And while most of this heavenly waste is likely to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, the incident in question serves as an ominous reminder of what can happen when bits of refuse survive their descent.

In this case, the offending object was identified by NASA as part of a stanchion that was used to load a bunch of spent batteries onto a cargo pallet onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Originally discarded from the ISS in 2021, the item was supposed to harmlessly degrade upon re-entry, but a fragment remained intact and eventually fell straight through the roof of the Otero family’s home in Naples, Florida, on March 8 of this year.

“My clients are seeking adequate compensation to account for the stress and impact that this event had on their lives,” said the family’s lawyer Mica Nguyen Worthy in a statement .

“They are grateful that no one sustained physical injuries from this incident, but a ‘near miss’ situation such as this could have been catastrophic,” she added. According to the statement from law firm Cranfill Sumner, at least one young member of the Otero family was at home at the moment of impact.

“If the debris had hit a few feet in another direction, there could have been serious injury or a fatality,” says Worthy.

AFP reports that the family are seeking more than $80,000 in damages, although Worthy insists that the outcome of this case could help to establish a protocol for handling space junk-related incidents in the future. “Here, the U.S. government, through NASA, has an opportunity to set the standard or ‘set a precedent’ as to what responsible, safe, and sustainable space operations ought to look like,” she said.

According to a study published in 2022, the space junk issue is now so severe that there’s a 10 percent chance of someone on Earth being killed by falling debris within the next decade. Whatever happens in the Otero family’s case could help to provide a legal framework for dealing with such an eventuality.