Posted on 09/23/2011 10:07:53 AM PDT by Evil Slayer
A huge, dead satellite tumbling to Earth is falling slower than expected, and may now plummet down somewhere over the United States tonight or early Saturday, despite forecasts that it would miss North America entirely, NASA officials now say.
The 6 1/2-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) was expected to fall to Earth sometime this afternoon (Sept. 23), but changes in the school bus-size satellite's motion may push it to early Saturday, according to NASA's latest observations of the spacecraft.
"The satellite's orientation or configuration apparently has changed, and that is now slowing its descent," NASA officials wrote in a morning status update today. "There is a low probability any debris that survives re-entry will land in the United States, but the possibility cannot be discounted because of this changing rate of descent."
NASA expects about 26 large pieces of the UARS spacecraft to survive re-entry through Earth's atmosphere and reach the planet's surface. The biggest piece should weigh about 300 pounds. The spacecraft is the largest NASA satellite to fall from space uncontrolled since 1979.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
That new re-entry window could have it land in the Oregon/Washington area! Heads up to all FReepers in that area.
Maybe aliens visited it!
Wonder how long from dirt to youtube?
I’m near Seattle. Have you always had that tagline!? (By the way - what is the timeframe - the next pass I guess? Less than an hour?)
The UARS is over Kenya now! Quick! Some one pull the rip cord!
Told ya!!
Heads up???
Yur joking, right??
0255 GMT (10:55 p.m. EDT Fri.)
The latest numbers show UARS flying in an orbit of 85 miles by 90 miles (135 km by 140 km). NASA officially predicts re-entry will happen sometime between 11:45 p.m. and 12:45 a.m. EDT (0345-0445 GMT). The satellite’s orbital flight path will be crossing the Pacific, North America, the Atlantic, Africa and Indian Ocean during the upcoming hour-long re-entry window.
I’ve had that tagline for a while now. The re-entry time is between 8:45pm and 9:45 PDT. It’ll probably make it to the Oregon/Washington coast about 5 or 10 minutes after that.
The place where it’ll start the re-entry window is half way between Hawaii and California. If the skies are clear in your area I would suggest looking SW, S, and SE more toward the horizon.
Nope. It really did fly over Kenya.
How are you tracking it?
Current altitude is 82.8 miles above the Earth.
It came down in Libya and bounced off a camel’s hump. It’s back in a stable orbit now.
This is a pretty good link as mention through the thread. :-)
http://www.livestream.com/spaceflightnowmobile
Twitter feed says estimated reentry in .6 hour, thats 36 minutes, don’t think it has enough time to clear the Pacific and make it to the west coast.
Looks like the first major area it might get to is PORTLAND!!!
Heavens-Above has UARS passing between Seattle and Corvallis from 9:17-9:21PM PDT (Max El. 46° viewed from Corvallis) should it hold together.
Could reenter 10 mins or so before that transit.
They call it U ARSe in regards to all of the climat change freaks. The climate change/global warming/carbon credits are all crashing just like this satellite.
From now on, could everyone please use EDT, or PDT. I live in California, and I’m starting to take this a bit more seriously.
Really????
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