NASA confirmed on Monday that the mysterious object that crashed into a roof in Florida last month was a piece of space debris from equipment disposed of at the International Space Station.

The cylindrical object that tore through a home in Naples on March 8 was transported to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral for analysis.

The space agency said it was a metal strut used to mount old batteries on a platform for disposal. The space platform was decommissioned in 2021, and it was expected that the entire payload would eventually burn up upon re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, but one piece survived.

The metal piece weighs 1.6 pounds (0.7 kg) and is about four inches long and approximately 1.5 inches wide.

The homeowner Alejandro Otero told WINK TV at the time that he was on vacation when his son informed him of what happened. Otero returned home early to check on the house, only to find that the object had pierced the roof and ripped through the floor.

Otero added, "I was shaking, what are the odds of something falling on my house with enough force to cause so much damage? I am extremely grateful that no one was hurt."