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Family whose roof was damaged by space debris files claims against NASA (arstechnica.com)

submitted 4 months ago by godzilla_lives@beehaw.org to c/space@beehaw.org

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Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, was not home when part of a battery pack from the International Space Station crashed through his home on March 8. His son Daniel, 19, was home but escaped injury. NASA has confirmed the 1.6-pound object, made of the metal alloy Inconel, was part of a battery pack jettisoned from the space station in 2021.

An attorney for the Otero family, Mica Nguyen Worthy, told Ars that she has asked NASA for "in excess of $80,000" for non-insured property damage loss, business interruption damages, emotional and mental anguish damages, and the costs for assistance from third parties.

"We intentionally kept it very reasonable because we did not want it to appear to NASA that my clients are seeking a windfall," Worthy said.

Seems reasonable to me. If I accidentally caused damages to someone's home, I'd certainly be held liable. But, I'm just some guy.

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[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 2 points 4 months ago

Everything we've put into that level of orbit is falling, it is just falling so slowly [...] go from a spiral to a more dramatic arc [...] Once within the atmosphere

This is not correct.

Anything in orbit, is constantly free-falling at barely less than 9.8m/s².
"Orbiting", is having enough lateral momentum to keep missing the Earth.
In the absence of an atmosphere, or any other external influence, an object would keep orbiting forever.
However... Earth's atmosphere doesn't just end, it gets thinner and thinner instead... up to the Moon and beyond (thanks to the solar wind blowing it out)
The reason for an object in LEO to "fall", as in "decrease its orbital height", is precisely because it's been in Earth's atmosphere all the time!

The reason for a "more dramatic arc", is that as an objects looses orbital height, it keeps hitting ever denser atmosphere, until it ends up losing enough momentum to not be able to complete an orbit, which precipitates things (pun intended).