NASA Confirmed, An Space Debris That Crashed In North Carolina Derived From Dragon SpaceX Plane

Illustration of aircraft debris falling to Earth (photo: dock. NASA)

JAKARTA Pieces of space debris were found falling in the North Carolina mountains on May 22. This beam is as big as a car hood for the standard model and is still coated with carbon fibers. Astronomist Jonathan McDowell, via platform X, revealed that debris escaping from the re-entry process is a service module for NASA's Management Crew-7 mission. The mission uses SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. Although this news has been shared since last May, NASA has only provided a statement regarding debris that is believed to have come from the Dragon plane. This statement was made to Justin Berger, one of the journalists in the Western North Carolina region. "SpaceX has confirmed the re-entry of Dragon spacecraft's baggage hardware to NASA after its service mission to the International Space Station," NASA Berger said, quoted from Space. Apparently, this is not the only Dragon aircraft service module that crashed to Earth. NASA said that, "a position that supports the supply of SpaceX's 30th commercial services and Crew-7 missions re-entered respectively to Saudi Arabia and North Carolina."

Initially, NASA estimated that Dragon's aircraft service module would burn completely as it entered the atmosphere. However, what happened was the opposite because some debris escaped and crashed. Luckily, this debris did not hit people's homes. As a repair, NASA plans to present additional solutions to deal with debris that escaped in the atmosphere. NASA and SpaceX will continue to explore additional solutions as we learn from the debris we found.'' Although this is the first time Crew Dragon aircraft have escaped the re-entry process, this is not the first case for NASA. In March, a cargo palette dumped from the International Space Station (ISS) in 2021 escaped the burning process in the atmosphere. As a result, this space junk fell and into a resident's house named Alejandro Otero in Naples, Florida. Otero decided to sue NASA and demanded compensation of US$80 thousand or around Rp1.3 billion.