A family in Naples, Florida, whose home was struck by debris that fell to Earth from outer space and punched a hole in the roof is pursuing $80,000 from Nasa in compensation for damages.
The law firm Cranfill Sumner said in a press release that it filed a claim on behalf of plaintiff Alejandro Otero and his family.
A metallic cylinder slab from a cargo pallet that had been released by the International Space Station in 2021 hit the Otero family home on 8 March 2024 while their son Daniel was home. No one was injured, though it created a hole in the roof and floor.
Otero told Wink News that the object almost hit his son, who was two rooms over.
The US space agency later confirmed the debris was from its flight support equipment. A section of the debris remained intact rather than disintegrating after it entered Earth’s atmosphere before falling to the surface.
I dunno, if a car kicks up a rock from the road and smashes a windscreen, that’s considered no one’s fault. Even though the car in front kicked it up.
In this case, NASA have assumed that things would burn up in re-entry, based on past experience and modelling. For some reason that didn’t happen here. However, that might not be enough to prove liability - if NASA is considered to already make reasonable efforts to prevent this.
A rock falling from a truck’s load on the highway however is the fault of the truck owner, regardless of whatever bumper sticker they want to put saying otherwise. Trucks are required to properly secure their loads.
This isn’t random space debris that existed and entered the atmosphere without NASA involvement.
Indeed, the difference between the two is that a driver has no responsibility for any debris already present on the road that they inadvertently caused to damage something. They are however responsible for damage caused by any object they themselves introduced to the roadway.
The NASA equivalent would be pretty straightforward, they are not responsible for any space rocks that they accidentally disturbed from orbit and caused to land on your house, but they are fully responsible if thier own craft or parts thereof fell from space onto your house.