It happens once in a while. A satellite runs out of life and comes crashing down. The Earth is so large, and so much of it is water, ice or sand, that the chance of this satellite crashing down on you is spectacularly small.
Officials said that they had no control over the nonfunctioning satellite and that it was unknown where the debris might land.
"Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation," Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said in a statement. "Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly. We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damage this satellite may cause."
Seems like a consensus that we're talking about USA-193 that went south. Ground controllers are unable to control the spacecraft. Of course, that's a story too -- why exactly it went nuts. A space debris hit? Bad spacecraft engineering by a contractor?
USA-193, if that's the one, took off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in December 2006 on a Delta 7920 rocket and on assignment from the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). But according to one secret satellite sleuth, the maximum payload for that kind of rocket, from that location, is no more than 10,000 pounds, perhaps even less than that -- not the 10 tons that some stories report.
Even so, a five-ton satellite diving into the Earth's atmosphere might well lead to debris making it down to home planet.
By the way, this "it’ll burn up" in the Earth's atmosphere is suspect in my mind.
For one, spacecraft entering the Earth's atmosphere leave a trail of chemistry of foreign substances in the process, from the top layer of the atmosphere down. I hope somebody out there is thinking about the environmental impact -- not just from this wayward satellite -- but also the daily dose of human-made detritus that assaults the upper layers of our biosphere on a daily basis. ...
My buddies over at the Aerospace Corporation's Center for Orbital and Reentry Studies advise me that some debris from reentering objects do survive the plunge and can strike the Earth. Certain materials, those with high melting points -- such as stainless steel, titanium and glass -- are more likely to survive reentry than are materials with low melting points.
The Times story included this:
Of particular concern in this case, however, is that the debris from the satellite may include hydrazine fuel, which is typically used for rocket maneuvers in space.
Much of the fuel on the experimental satellite may not have been used and, should the tank survive re-entry into the atmosphere, the remaining fuel would be hazardous to anyone on the ground. It is likely, however, that the tank may rupture on re-entry, and that the fuel would burn off in a fiery plume that would be visible to the naked eye.
John E. Pike, the director of
Globalsecurity.org in Alexandria, Va., said that if the satellite in question was a spy satellite, it was unlikely to have any kind of nuclear fuel, but that it could contain toxins, including beryllium, which is often used as a rigid frame for optical components.
Skylab's FallSome of you may remember that back in 1979,
the 76-ton Skylab space station fell from the sky. I remember covering the story of a farmer in rural Kentucky who said a piece of it fell on his farm. The metal was singed and magically had a NASA logo and the word Skylab in stencil. Of course it was a hoax.
NASA said:
On July 11, 1979, Skylab impacted the Earth surface. The debris dispersion area stretched from the Southeastern Indian Ocean across a sparsely populated section of Western Australia.
SOMETHING IS FALLING NOW DAYS. THE SPACE JUNK CAPER OF...
