Space junk crash-landed in the luxury land of North Carolina.
A landscaping crew working at The Glamping Collective, a mountain resort near Asheville in Haywood County, found a large mystery object on May 22 that NASA has confirmed is a piece of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule that will reach the International Space Station (ISS) in 2023 ).
According to a Space.com report, one large piece — about the size of a standard car hood and covered in carbon fiber webbing — was found on a hiking trail, and several other smaller pieces fell into the backyards of nearby homes.
The objects came from “Dragon spacecraft trunk hardware” that was “assumed to burn completely,” North Carolina’s ABC 13 reported.
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Other pieces from SpaceX funded by Elon Musk‘with The capsules were found in Canada in February and more recently in Saudi Arabia around the time a piece was found in North Carolina, NASA said in a statement.
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“NASA is not aware of any structural damage or injuries resulting from these findings,” the space agency said in a statement.
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A family from Florida had a similar, if much scarier, encounter with space junk that didn’t burn up as expected.
In March, a 1.6-pound metal alloy object tore through the roof and two stories of a Naples, Florida, home while a family member was inside.
The owner of the house, Alejandro Otero, said on X that it: “Tore through the roof and went through (sic) 2 floors. Almost his (sic) my son.”
Like the object that crashed in North Carolina, the object that hit the Otero family’s home “should have heated up and disintegrated during atmospheric re-entry,” NASA told Fox News Digital in a previous email.
No one was injured in either situation, but the Otero family’s attorney, Mica Nguyen Worthy, said, “A near miss situation like this could have been catastrophic.
“Space debris is a real and serious problem because of the increase in space traffic in recent years,” Worthy said.
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NASA said it was conducting a “detailed investigation of the ejection and re-entry analysis to determine the cause of the debris’ survival and to update the modeling and analysis.”
“NASA remains committed to operating responsibly in low Earth orbit and mitigating as much risk as possible to protect people on Earth when space hardware must be deployed.”
On Worthy’s other point, a malfunctioning Russian satellite imploded near the ISS last week, prompting a brief discussion during a Friday teleconference with NASA and Boeing officials.
The teleconference with reporters focused largely on the Starliner’s helium leaks and faulty thrusters, but officials expressed little concern that debris from the satellite would reach Earth.
The threat was averted after the pieces missed the ISS.
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The resort sold space junk as an attraction.
“We invite you to experience it for yourself! Starting Monday, June 3,” the resort said on its website. “We’ll display the space junk for you at the start of our Sunset Summit Trail!”
A Florida family took a stricter approach to the object that hit their home.
Worthy made the request to NASA on behalf of the Otero family, saying it was an opportunity for NASA to “set a precedent for what responsible, safe and sustainable space operations should look like.”
“If the incident happened overseas and someone in another country was harmed by the same space debris as in the case of Oteros, the US would be absolutely responsible for those damages.”
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She pleaded with NASA and the US government to follow the same legal principle.
NASA declined to comment on pending legal action.
Original article source: NASA explains that debris fell from space at a mountain resort in North Carolina