New Cockpit Photos May Show What Struck The United 737 — Injuring A Pilot And Sparking Space Debris Fears

Here are photos from the exterior of the cockpit where space debris may have hit a United Airlines Boeing 737 flying from Denver to Los Angeles on Thursday. Flight 1093 diverted to Salt Lake City with 140 passengers on board. The aircraft remains on the ground there two days later.

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— JonNYC (@xjonnyc.bsky.social) October 18, 2025 at 8:23 AM

These photos come from aviation watchdog JonNYC who previously shared a photo from the interior of the cockpit during flight. That showed the windshield and the arm of a pilot – an arm that wasn’t consistent with my earlier guess of a crack of a windshield ply due to heat or a connector fault. That guess was based on:

1. Earlier reporting that the diversion was due to a crack in one layer of the windshield.

2. Localized overheating and thermal stress causing a ply to crack can leave heat discoloration or “scorchy” marks.

3. The risk of space debris to aviation is miniscule – a 2023 FAA report found an annual 0.1% chance that falling space debris would cause a single global aviation casualty (individual passenger risk less than a trillion‑to‑one). There’s not been a single commercial space debris strike of a commercial aircraft on record.

Photo NOT confirmed

Hearing there were scorch-marks, so space-debris or meteorite. THOSE ARE TWO THEORIES

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— JonNYC (@xjonnyc.bsky.social) October 17, 2025 at 1:39 PM

However these new photos certainly suggest an external impact. I am still skeptical of space debris as the cause and now lean more towards hail. Here’s what we see in the exterior photos:

• Impact near the upper inboard corner of the captain’s windshield with radial/cellular cracking that propagates across the outer ply.

• Dozens of marks on the surrounding nose — exactly what hail peppering looks like.

• No soot, arc trails, or localized burn at the window that you’d expect with a connector/terminal arcing event.

My best guess from this photo is a hail strike to the outboard glass ply at cruise. That matches far better than an internal electrical fault or debris strike. Compare this to hail encounters where cockpit windows go opaque, the radome is pock‑marked, and the airplane diverts such as a Delta Airbus A320 near Denver and an Austrian Airbus A320 headed to Vienna.

The abrasions on the pilot’s forearm in the cockpit shot need explanation. Minor “glass dust” or incidental contact during the event might look like that? The photo from inside the cockpit has a frosted or opaque look, which is what I’d expect when outboard glass fractures. There is no hole or penetration visible outside.

The impact signature and radome peppering appear to be textbook hail. That’s not something you usually see at 36,000 feet, but here’s an FAA circular talking about hail and thunderstorms above 35,000 feet. Hail can be ejected and fall well away from a storm’s core, often in apparently clear air.

So that’s my bet. I can’t rule out space debris, but hail seems like the more probabalistic bet.

I’d love to hear from pilots and meteorologists in the comments on this one, though.