The US space agency NASA has disclosed that debris ejected from the International Space Station crashed through the roof of a Florida home in March.
NASA and local television reported that the object tore through the roof and damaged the floors, but no one was injured.
The cylindrical object was about four centimeters in diameter and 10 centimeters in length and weighed roughly 700 grams.
NASA said on Monday it was a metal support used to mount aging batteries on a cargo pallet. The agency says the hardware weighed 2,600 kilograms when it was released from the space station in 2021.
It says the hardware was expected to fully burn up during entry into Earth's atmosphere, but one piece survived.
It says it will conduct a detailed analysis into the cause and it remains committed to "mitigating as much risk as possible to protect people on Earth when space hardware must be released."