Homeowner Alejandro Otero told The Washington Post that he received a panicked phone call from his son the day of the incident. He returned home to find a dense, cylindrical piece of charred metal slightly smaller than a soup can lodged in the wall, and immediately knew it was “from extraterrestrial life.”
“My clients are seeking appropriate compensation to account for the stress and impact this incident has had on their lives,” the family’s attorney, Mica Nguyen Worthy, said in a news release. She said: “If the debris had hit a few feet away in the other direction, serious injury or death could have occurred.”
NASA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the legal claims.
NASA previously confirmed that the 1.6-pound cylindrical object that broke through the roof of Otero’s home was a piece of a 5,800-pound cargo pallet carrying old nickel-metal hydride batteries that was ejected from the International Space Station in March 2021.
It was expected that all space debris would be lost upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, but it could somehow survive, raising concerns that such incidents could increase in the future.
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“With space traffic increasing in recent years, space debris is a real and serious problem,” Worthy said.
How NASA responds to the claims could set a legal precedent for how it handles cases involving U.S. citizens and residents, Worthy said. She is asking NASA to handle her family’s case in the same way it fulfills its obligations under international space law.
In the case of an international accident, the “launching state” – the country that procured the launch of the object or the country from which the object was launched – is liable for any damage caused by the object. In the early ’80s, the Soviet Union agreed to pay millions of dollars in compensation after a malfunctioning satellite caught fire over Canada.
“If an incident had occurred overseas, and someone in another country had been harmed by space debris, as was the case with Oteros, the United States would have been absolutely liable to compensate for those damages,” Worthy said.
Worthy did not immediately respond to questions about the claim, including how much the family is seeking. She told science and technology publication Ars Technica that her claim “exceeds $80,000.”
NASA has six months to respond to claims under the federal tort claims law, she said in a news release. Claims include uninsured property damage losses, business interruption damages, emotional and mental distress damages and third-party support costs.
Praveena Somasundaram and Daniel Wu contributed to this report.
