NASA says its defunct satellite will crash to earth sooner than expected, some time Friday night or Saturday morning. According to estimates the huge satellite will miss North America after re-entry and break up into fragments.
NASA has revised its predictions and now says its defunct Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite will enter the atmosphere some time late September 23 or the morning of September 24. The 7-ton UARS satellite, the size of a school bus, is expected to break up into 26 pieces that will survive re-entry. NASA says the pieces have a 1 in 3200 probability of hitting a terrestrial inhabitant, but believes that the pieces will miss North America. A more accurate prediction will be issued within 12 hours of the projected breakup.
NASA says in the 50-plus years since Russians sent Sputnik 1 into space, it only knows of one person that has been hit by space debris, Lottie Williams of Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was hit on her shoulder by a piece of burnt foam from a rocket. When an ABC reporter interviewed her she said “I was a little disappointed — well, I was a lot disappointed because, you know, I was thinking I had something celestial,” she said. “And here I got something man-made, you know? And nobody even knows anything about it.”
As they say, nothing happens in Oklahoma except tornadoes
A British scientist has issued his own projections, estimating a splash in the southern ocean, but Dr. Eves says the satellite’s orbital decay can only be predicted with a 10-percent accuracy and four different scenarios within a 6-hour window are possible. The satellite completes its orbit around the earth every 1.5 hours.
Fox News has reported that FEMA, the Federal Emeregency Management Agency, is prepared in the event that the satellite crashes on U.S. territory.
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