How a home in Florida was hit with space junk

Space junk: how long has it been there? Former astronaut Julie Payette talks about space junk after a home in Florida was hit with it.

About 2,000 kilometres above in low Earth orbit is a junkyard with millions of pieces of space junk travelling at a very high speed.

Last month, a mysterious object crashed into the roof of a home in Florida and it turned out to be a piece of metal that was used to mount old batteries on a cargo pallet from the International Space Center.

While it only weighed less than two pounds and was 1.6 inches in diameter, it ripped through the ceiling and tore up the flooring in the home in Naples, Fl.

Former astronaut Julie Payette explained in an interview with CTV News on Friday that space debris can be anything from old or inactive satellites, rocket stages, and other discarded hardware such as instrument covers or separation bolts.

Even though some debris is very small, they can do a lot of damage since they can travel as fast as seven times the speed of a bullet.

Payette said there are several options for decommissioning hardware that is in space: disassembly and return to Earth, boosting to a higher orbit, natural orbital decay with random re-entry, and controlled targeted re-entry to a remote ocean area.

Watch the video above for the full interview with CTV Montreal Anchor Mutsumi Takahashi.