WHAM!

An object crashes through your roof. Where did it come from?

Outer space!

Last month, an object smashed into a home in Naples, Florida. Thankfully, the man who lives in the house was on vacation. The metal piece was cylinder-shaped, like a small soda can. It weighed 1.6 pounds—about the weight of an adult’s dress shoe. A shoe wouldn’t normally break a hole in a roof, of course. But the bit of space junk fell a long way. The object picked up momentum as it fell.

NASA workers took the object to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Researchers studied it. NASA confirmed: It came from space. The piece of metal was used to mount old batteries on a cargo pallet for disposal. The pallet was dumped from the International Space Station in 2021. The space station orbits about 250 miles above Earth. People expected the load to burn up as it entered Earth’s atmosphere. And it did—except for this piece.

Alejandro Otero owns the house with the now-holey roof. He says that he was on vacation when the space junk landed. His son told him what had happened. Mr. Otero came home early to check on the house. That’s when he found the object. It had ripped through his ceiling and torn up the flooring.

“I was shaking. I was completely in disbelief,” Mr. Otero says. “What are the chances of something landing on my house with such force to cause so much damage? I’m super grateful that nobody got hurt.”

The International Space Station (ISS) is an orbiting laboratory. Scientists from different parts of the world do research there. You don’t need to worry about space station junk falling on your house. It (almost) never happens.

Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you; He will never permit the righteous to be moved. — Psalm 55:22