NASA: Satellite debris has hit Earth

[Verarde]

From the Washington Post:

A 12,500-pound decommissioned satellite that was lazily falling toward the Earth over the past two days finally came down around midnight Friday, NASA said early Saturday.

The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) fell back to Earth between 11:23 p.m. Friday and 1:09 a.m. Saturday, NASA said in an update on its website. The Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California said the satellite penetrated the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, the agency said. It is not yet known when exactly the satellite hit Earth, and whether it ended up in water or on land, NASA said.

The satellite took longer than expected to return to Earth after 20 years in space. Unpredictable, and completely out of control, the satellite was expected to shower 26 pieces of space junk across a 500-mile linear crash zone. Most of its parts are believed to be burned up.

At 10:30 p.m. Friday, NASA said the satellite’s reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere was expected between 11:45 p.m. Friday and 12:45 a.m. Saturday, and its path was over Canada, Africa and the Atlatic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The risk to public safety is very remote.

Small variations in reentry timing means vast differences as to where UARS would come down. The satellite, designed to help scientists understand climate change, circled the planet at a 57-degree inclination to the Equator, a path that took it every hour and a half from the frozen north to the frigid seas beyond the southern coast of Australia — and back again.

“It’s dancing all over the place. It looks like the trend is to go longer than we think,” said Bill Ailor, an engineer with the Aerospace Corp., who has been monitoring the satellite.

For two days, NASA had predicted that its satellite would arrive Friday afternoon or evening. But the satellite slowed down Thursday and Friday, showing no eagerness to leave space.

“There are random forces of nature acting on the satellite that we can neither control nor predict,” NASA spokeswoman Beth Dickey said Friday evening. “Very small changes have very large consequences over time, and in this case, the change has been in the orientation of the spacecraft.”

The difficulty in predicting the satellite’s behavior was demonstrated by changing predictions even over small periods of time. At 7:30 p.m. Friday, NASA put out an update saying the satellite was on track to come down between 11 p.m. Friday and 3 a.m. Saturday.

On Friday morning, the satellite was 100 miles up, NASA said. UARS was expected to heat up, partially melt and break into pieces, NASA said this week.

The biggest piece would weigh more than 300 pounds, which would pose a hazard if it fell on a populated area. But most of the planet is open ocean.

The Aerospace forecast Friday night, based on Air Force tracking data, showed that UARS would hit the atmosphere over the southern Indian Ocean at about 1 a.m. Eastern time.

That might mean that fiery fragments could be seen in Australia about 15 minutes later.

Thoughts?

 

[Winner]

Aw, I was hoping it would crash here - I was looking for a nice souvenir.

 

[amadeus]

So they know it landed, but not when or where?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I guess so, USA #1.

Should NASA be charged for littering or is that not lolbertarian enough?

 

[jtb1127]

How are they going to clear out space junk?

 

[Tee Kay]

I think the Chinese will be using them for target practice.

 

[Dreadnought]

What the hammer else are they supposed to do with satellites?

 

[jtb1127]

I'm talking about debris in space.

 

[Winner]

Ideally, heat up the atmosphere so that it expands enough to cause the debris' orbit to decay.

Unfortunately, I am afraid this would also lead to the extinction of multicellular life. Ok, back to the drawing board...

 

[Dreadnought]

I don't see it as a necessarily terrible thing at the moment. In the future we can clean it up.

 

[aelf]

Warmistas polluting the earth. Why am I not surprised?

 

[Winner]

I don't see it as a necessarily terrible thing at the moment. In the future we can clean it up.

Well, it's not a problem if you don't mind abandoning spaceflight and low-Earth orbit satellite services until that imaginary future arrives...

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I hope it didnt hit somebodys house.

 

[jtb1127]

I don't see it as a necessarily terrible thing at the moment. In the future we can clean it up.

NASA thinks it is.

 

[aelf]

NASA also thinks we need to worry about climate change

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

How are they going to clear out space junk?

They need to find a way to get it all near the Equator. Then send up more. Eventually we can have rings like Saturn.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Maybe they can send up a robot that goes around and picks up the junk and brings it back to earth.

 

[Winner]

Maybe they can send up a robot that goes around and picks up the junk and brings it back to earth.

That could perhaps be done with the large stuff (defunct satellites), if you could provide it with insane amounts of fuel to allow it to change orbits constantly. You can't really do it with the small stuff which is what worries us.

Actually, we could get into situation when there is so much crap flying around that a sort of chain reaction is triggered. More collisions create more debris, which create more debris, and so on and so forth. Then you can kiss spaceflight goodbye.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Is it metal? Maybe use a large magnet?

 

[shadowplay]

So according to beeb it landed off the western coast of the US:

Nasa says its six-tonne UARS satellite landed off the US west coast after entering the earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean early on Saturday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15034073