Chicken Little was right.

[Oldfart]

Bus-size satellite heading for Earth

North America correspondent Lisa Millar
Posted September 17, 2011 08:42:00

United States

A 20-year-old satellite the size of a bus has fallen out of orbit and is expected to crash somewhere on Earth next week.

NASA says the giant satellite is plunging to earth more quickly than anticipated and will crash during a three-day window around September 24.

The satellite was shut down in 2005 after completing its mission and was expected to fall to earth some time this year, but experts have now narrowed it down.

Hurtling at eight kilometres per second, it could land anywhere between 57 degrees north and 57 degrees south of the equator - most of the populated world, including Australia.

NASA says the risk to life from the satellite is just 1 in 3,200 as most of the satellite will break or burn up before reaching Earth.

Scientists have identified 26 separate pieces that could survive the fall through the Earth's atmosphere and debris could rain across an area 400 to 500 kilometres wide.

This is only about 1/8 the size of the ISS.

[gekkogecko]

Yeah, but I'm still won't be impressed until it lands squarely on top of all the politicians who cut the funding for the US's manned space efforts.

[dicksbro]

Amen. I wonder where you put in your recommendation to the space gods and how you tell them the address for congress. :(

Say, you know, falling space craft could be a good thing. :)

[jseal]

Alas, while the technology is there, the passion seems to be gone—at least in America and Russia. While China might step up to the plate, and it claims it wishes, like President John Kennedy did, to send people to the surface of the moon and return them safely to Earth, the date for doing so seems elastic. There is none of Kennedy’s specificity in the announcements from Beijing.

Even that last extra-Terran bastion of human habitation, the ISS, is scheduled to be de-orbited in 2020. It may be that the Space Age, as we conceive it to be, is over. :(

[Oldfart]

Does that put us back in the stone age?

[PantyFanatic]

Much worse. It leaves us in the earthly age of humans.

[Oldfart]

Our friends in the cool disk things have deserted us?

[Scarecrow]

It's beging to look like it.

[jseal]

Speaking of "looking like it (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15009337)" ...

[Oldfart]

Any time now.

[Booger]

Well you know what they say what goes up must come down.

[Oldfart]

They still don't know where or when it hit.

[gekkogecko]

*WHOM* they should be worried about *whom* it may have hit.

[Oldfart]

There has to be a first one, injured by Nasa space debris.

[jseal]

Be patient; it is bound to happen sooner or later. Then NASA can be sued!

[Oldfart]

Need Another Squillion Attorneys?