Hunk Of Metal Crashes Through Family's Roof

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio -- NASA has been asked to help determine what crashed through the roof of a home in Ohio, narrowly missing a sleeping woman and her baby.

Blair said she was dozing with her 7-week-old son, Josiah, in her bedroom shortly after lunch when she heard what sounded like something hitting the roof of her condominium.

A few seconds later, the object and part of the roof hit the bed just a few feet away from her son, then fell to the floor.

"It scared me because it came so close to the baby," she said of her son, Josiah. "But I just thought it was something from the roof of the house, maybe from all the ice melting."

Police described the object as a piece of silvery metal, possibly aluminum, that is burnt and discolored around the edges.

The letters "U.S." are stamped in one corner, but numbers on the object are obscured.

Along with NASA investigators, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Middletown Police Department are looking into the incident.

"It is way too early to tell what it is or where it came from," said Bob Gillespie, an FAA aviation safety inspector. He speculated that the object might have fallen from an airplane.

Investigators have not said whether they believe the debris is space junk. Police are storing the item until federal officials arrive to examine it.

> Investigators have not said whether they believe
> the debris is space junk...

In cases like these, it's usually an airliner part.

But if that photo is legit, it sure looks like something
the decayed out of orbit and didn't burn up (but got
heated fairly severely).

Just coincidentally, in today's Columbia disaster news,
we have:

"Engineers specializing in the solid rocket boosters are
checking to see whether the debris could have broken off
from one of the boosters, the official said. They are
looking at any material that could have come loose,
including a silicone-based heat shield called
superlightweight ablator that covered two structures on
the boosters called bolt catchers.

Each bolt catcher is the size of two large stacked cans.
There is a catcher on each rocket booster near the forward
area of the external tank. They catch explosive bolts that
come loose when the rocket boosters separate from the
external tank as the shuttle shoots into orbit.

The official said NASA engineers recently determined that
the amount of loads and stresses they had thought the bolt
catchers could handle had been exceeded during their actual
uses. During manufacturing, the bolt catchers were tested
without the ablator on them.

The consequences of the bolt catchers' exceeding their load
and stress limits are unknown right now, and engineers will
have to run more tests, the official said."

I have a problem with this showing up so late, but it needs
to be investigated and ruled out.

If this is a bipod bolt, it should have re-entered with
the external tank on launch day.

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