RE: Possible case of space debris hitting Florida house on March8

From: Ted Molczan via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_lists.seesatmail.org>
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2024 14:25:45 -0400
Marco Langbroek wrote:

> On March 8, 2024, a house in Naples, Florida, was hit by an cylindrical object
> crashing through the roof:
>
> https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/04/trash-from-the-international-space-station-may-have-
> hit-a-house-in-florida/
>
> The time and location indeed matches with the final trajectory for the ISS EPS
> battery stack reentry (47853, 1998-067RZ) and it is only a few minutes after the
> time from the TIP for that reentry (8 March 19:29:00 +-1m UTC near 22 N, 85.5 W).
>
> Naples, Florida is some 600 km away from the TIP position, and the trajectory
> would pass within 20 km of that place.

I have obtained a similar result.

I used GMAT 2022a (General Mission Analysis Tool) to propagate the final TLE of 1998-067RZ / 47853 (epoch 24068.70028413) to decay. By trial and error I found three values of the area to mass ratio that yielded theoretical points of impact near the address of the house suspected to have been hit by a fragment. They pass about 4.6 km to the northwest, less than 4 minutes after the reporte

There does seem to be a circumstantial case implicating 1998-067RZ / 47853. Hopefully, the examination of the object in question will be decisive.

Notes:

I computed the state vector at the epoch of the TLE, and converted it from TEME to J2000 for use in GMAT.

I used the latest space weather file published by CelesTrak:

https://celestrak.org/SpaceData/

Ted Molczan



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Received on Tue Apr 02 2024 - 11:26:48 UTC

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