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Subscribe to RSSAerospace engineers from Analytical Graphics Inc. used the company's analysis and visualization software to create this video, showing the UARS satellite in its current orbit, its potential debris area, and models for its burn-up and breakup. More info: http://blogs.agi.com
Update for 4:30 p.m. ET Sept. 23: NASA revised its forecast since this report was first posted to note that the Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite was not sinking as quickly as expected, and that there was a "low probability" that debris from the re-entry could fall on North America. The revised forecast said the satellite could come down late Friday or early Saturday, Eastern Daylight Time.
Earlier report from Wednesday: NASA says its derelict Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite is expected to make its final fiery plunge sometime on Friday afternoon ET and notes that "the satellite will not be passing over North America during that time period."
This afternoon's update suggests that Americans are not at any risk for injuries or property damage due to satellite debris. It also means they'll miss out on the fireworks.
For two weeks, experts on orbital debris have been telling people that the 20-year-old, bus-sized spacecraft would soon fall through the atmosphere and drop about two dozen pieces of debris on Earth — but until today, there was too much uncertainty to say exactly which day that would happen. In the morning update, NASA narrowed the time frame down to Friday. The forecast was refined further at 6:35 p.m. ET. But NASA said it couldn't yet be any more precise than to say it'll be Friday afternoon, Eastern Daylight Time.
"It is still too early to predict the time and location of re-entry with any more certainty, but predictions will become more refined in the next 24 to 48 hours," NASA said.
The six-ton satellite's orbit is limited to between 57 degrees north latitude and 57 degrees south, spanning the width of the world between northern Canada and the tip of South America. In the past, Nicholas Johnson, the head of NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office, has estimated that the chances that any of the UARS debris would hit anybody were 1 in 3,200 — which translates into a 1-in-20 trillion risk for any particular person.
NASA's Johnson told me today that he won't be recalculating the odds as the prediction becomes more precise. "At that point, we don't compute odds," he said.
NASA and its partners at the U.S. Strategic Command will be issuing updates on the timing at 24 hours before the expected fall, then at T-minus-12 hours, T-minus-6 hours and T-minus-2 hours — and we'll be passing those predictions along. But even two hours before re-entry, experts won't be able to project exactly where the debris will end up.
When UARS' predicament first came to light a couple of weeks ago, Johnson said the margin of error for the 500-mile (800-kilometer) fall zone would be somewhere around 6,000 miles, or a quarter of the way around the planet. The uncertainty arises because of a couple of factors: Solar outbursts, like the ones we've been getting over the past few weeks, lead to a faster decay of orbits for low-flying spacecraft. Also, the satellite is tumbling, which leads to unpredictable atmospheric-drag effects. Because there's no fuel left for orbital maneuvering, no one has any control over UARS' orbital course.
Most of the satellite will burn up in the atmosphere, but NASA estimates that about a half-ton's worth of fragments will survive re-entry and fall to Earth. The computer models suggest that the biggest chunk would weigh about 300 pounds (150 kilograms), or as much as a refrigerator. Anyone who happened to be in the vicinity of the debris fall would see bright streaks in the sky, much like the fireworks seen when pieces of Russia's Mir space station fell to Earth in 2001.
The most likely outcome is that the remnants of the UARS satellite would fall into a desolate patch of ocean or an uninhabited stretch of land, far away from any witnesses or potential victims. "Throughout the entire 54 years of the Space Age, there has been no confirmed report of anybody in the world being injured or severely impacted by any re-entering debris," Johnson noted two weeks ago.
A dead satellite the size of a school bus is getting lower and lower and will crash into Earth, NASA said. The best guess is that it falls on Friday. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
UARS was deployed from the shuttle Discovery in 1991, beginning a $750 million mission to study the upper atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. In 2005, it was shut down and placed into a disposal orbit, and its altitude has been slowly decaying ever since. Now the descent is picking up speed: NASA said its altitude at 1:30 p.m. ET today ranged from roughly 120 to 130 miles (190 to 205 kilometers).
Nowadays, satellite operators lay out a well-defined procedure for the safe disposal of Earth-orbiting satellites at the end of their lifetimes. In fact, NASA and its international partners are already devoting attention to what needs to be done when it comes time to get rid of the International Space Station, sometime after 2020. But back in the 1990s, when the UARS mission was launched, such issues were "really not given a lot of thought," Johnson said.
Update for 9 p.m. ET: If North America is out of the picture, what about the rest of the world? Take a look at the graphic on this webpage from The Aerospace Corp. to see why NASA has ruled out North America based on its time estimate.
The circled icon on the map indicates the position of the UARS satellite at 4 p.m. ET Friday. The blue curves show its orbital track before 4 p.m., and the yellow curves show the track after 4. If UARS re-enters the atmosphere before 4, the potential fall zones include the Atlantic, Africa, Middle East, north Asia and the Pacific. If it happens after 4, South and Central America, south Asia and Australia come into the mix. But it'd be well into Friday evening by the time the orbital track goes over the U.S. and Canadian East Coast.
More about the satellite saga:
- Watch the doomed satellite tumble in space
- FEMA ready if plunging satellite hits U.S.
- Who'll get hit by a falling satellite?
- Real-time UARS tracking from N2YO.com
Check NASA's UARS status page for updated information about the satellite's whereabouts, all the way to the end.
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.
Leave a Comment:
"Throughout the entire 54 years of the Space Age, there has been no confirmed report of anybody in the world being injured or severely impacted by any re-entering debris," Johnson noted two weeks ago.
Johnson may want to reconsider his use of the word "impacted".
If NASA can't tell when and where a object they launched is going to fall within the next two weeks, how can they , or anyone else , tell us how hot it will be and how high the ocean will be in 100 years?
Let's looking at it this way, on the one hand, you have a broad and slow object of observation, that you can experience and observe first hand.
The other object, is several miles away in a lethal environment hurtling along at thousands of miles per hour and is only observable through telescopes.
Which do you think will be easier to work with?
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
How about that movie, Andromedia Strain, 1971. (Let's bring back something back from Space).
Or the TV Series, Dead Like Me:
Most people forgot that the de orbiting of the Mir was intentional, and that eventhough it was supposed to completely go into the South Pacific, there were claims of Austrialians of Mir debris. The same thing happened with earlier Skylab.
As I recall there was a fair amount of debris spread all across Texas when the Columbia broke-up on re-entry, and we were lucky then that nobody was hurt or killed. Murphy's Law says that sooner or later NASA scientists will have to eat their words.
gary-309869, it is that kind of logical fallacy that gives climate change skeptics a bad rap.
www.skepticalscience.com/weather-forecasts-vs-climate-models-predictions.htm
"gary-309869
If NASA can't tell when and where a object they launched is going to fall within the next two weeks, how can they , or anyone else , tell us how hot it will be and how high the ocean will be in 100 years?"
You must be one of those apples vs. oranges type of guy. Sea levels will be rising. The temps will go up. The effects will be a lot more devastating than one person being hit or killed by debris falling from the sky.
"Old Timer-88224
As I recall there was a fair amount of debris spread all across Texas when the Columbia broke-up on re-entry, and we were lucky then that nobody was hurt or killed. Murphy's Law says that sooner or later NASA scientists will have to eat their words."
nasa to eat their words? They didn't say that there was zero chance that no one could be hurt or killed.
You need to go back and read the original article.
"Johnson says the chance that any piece of the satellite will hit anybody at all is 1-in-3,200, and the chance that you specifically would be hit is 1-in-20 trillion. (Unless you live in, say, Finland. Then there's zero
chance.)"
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/15/7782656-satellites-doom-coming-sooner
"a 300 pounds piece" Friday I would be in the basement.
Nasa satellite will fall in Rome, Italy
johnson's statement is falsely leading. We have been fortunate so far not to have anything to harm anyone when the debris lands. That's what he should have said.
No he should have said what he said. The chances are very slim. You could say you were fortunate this morning becasue a volcano didn't spontaneously erupt in your living room. But that would be silly.
Misty, you are you using the term "land" rather loosely.
You have a better chance of getting killed falling in your bath tub, getting killed in a car wreck, or even being murdered. Chill dude. You will die. Space junk killing you would at least make you famous.
Does everyone remember how to DUCK and COVER?
Good one, Shawn!
I'm reminded of those unfortunate folks who were crushed when bundles of food and aid were dropped via parachute in a relief effort years ago. Those bundles fell at a much slower rate than this space debris will and yet they were not able to 'Duck and Cover'. It does tend to give new meaning to the football addage - "Go out for a long one!" : )
"Duck and Cover"; useful to safely withstand tornadoes, nuclear bombs, volcanic lava flows and falling space debris.
This is not acceptable. Some day, someone is going to be killed. Why can they not catch this satellite and send it toward the sun or somewhere away from Earth, as part of their responsibility in launching this thing? I'm sure they could have done this with the Space Shuttle.
"Catch it and send it towards the sun"? The cost of such a mission would be about 20 billion (very conservatively), especially since we no longer have a shuttle. So you essentially want to make it 5-10 times more costly to place satellites in orbit because we're going to mandate the retrieval and relaunching into the sun at end of life. Do you like having telephone coverage around the world? real time, accurate weather forecasting? GPS in your phone and car? television signals from around the globe? security systems to keep you safe from terrorists and war-mongers?, etc., etc., etc.?
Never going to happen, is my point. Don't worry. You have better odds of winning Powerball (far, far better) than you do of being struck by falling space debris. Actually no one has ever been hit by falling space debris!
With regards to spending money, this one shouldn't even be in the top one million projects; we've got bigger fish to fry.
NightBreeze - you are almost correct. We are constantly bombarded from microscopic items from space, but nobody has yet been injured.
The odds of this item striking near you is extremely small. But hey - I am hoping that it takes out my house. I can't sell it (in this market), and the feds would have to reimburse me.
People have been hit with meteors and structures have been damaged. It just isn't common.
Interested, you introduce a possible upside to the situation! :-)
@interested observer.... speaking of odds... 1 in 3200 is much better(worse?) than hitting the lottery big jackpot, getting struck by lightening, finding a 4 leaf clover, being in an accident in the next year, being shot by a bad guy.
Tony, there has only been one recorded case of a person struck by a meteorite and she was not injured.
Tony,
I stand corrected. Thank you for pointing out my incorrect posting earlier. Sorry about that, all! It seems that there have been a lot more reported strikes and injuries than I had realized over the years. Not sure how I got that one so wrong... Well, I learned something new today anyway!
Get Real said, "This is not acceptable ....... Why can they not catch this satellite and send it toward the sun"
Ever tried standing flat-footed, have your friend aim a 30-06 about 20 feet over your head & pull the trigger, you jump up & catch the bullet wearing only a cotton glove, without suffering even a bruise to your hand, then transfer the bullet to your foot, throw it back where it came from, hitting your friend in the ear .................. all before you fall back to the ground ..................... with only one eye open?
I kinda doubt it. If you have tried it, I bet you failed. Now you know the approximate difficulty of what you describe, the general amount of danger, and a decent estimate of success.
READING the article (a lost art) will let you know that 20 years ago there often wasn't a real good plan of how to safely bring down what you sent up. An end-of-life "parking orbit" would USUALLY take care of everything ..... at least for a couple hundred years or so. NOW these disposal plans are at least being drafted before the object is even launched. Unfortunately, a very small percentage of those "parked" derelicts decay out of orbit prematurely, from a variety of reasons. When that happens, often a complete surprise, we almost never have any significant control over them, & it's much too late for an emergency intercept mission to grab it or give it a push.
Our super-advanced modern military could almost certainly throw together a quick plan to blast it into 1,000 small pieces, none of which would survive re-entry. But all that would do is cause more problems similar to this in the not-too-distant future. Now much smaller & lighter, gravity & atmospheric drag would work much less against the objects. Many of them would most likely be kicked into even higher, more permanent orbits. Inevitably, some of these would almost surely & eventually run into something else up there, making more junk to run into something else. Some day one of those "something else's" would be another large satellite, killing our guidance link with it & scrambling it's on-board computerized brain. And then you're right back in the same boat.
It's highly unfortunate, but just a hard & definite fact-of-life, that this will ALWAYS have a slim possibility of occuring ....... at least as long as the human race continues it's wants & needs of neat little things like satellite TV, near real-time weather forecasting & warnings, global positioning, internet access from anywhere, spying on your neighbours, & calling your girlfriend in Moscow, from a research ship docked at Antarctica, to let her know you just talked to your wife in California, and she's suppose to sign the divorce papers tomorrow.
If you want to give all that neat stuff up & go back to 19th-century roughing it, then the threat of being konked in the head by a flying bolt would eventually fade to almost zero. But personally, I'm gonna keep my ultra-modern lifestyle & not worry about the abysmally tiny chance that my new Corvette will get a ding from a falling hydrazine tank. Matter-of-fact, I'm bummed that this one probably WON'T be breaking up over the central U.S. I've been an astronomer for so many years that I'm embarrassed to elaborate, since that would hint at how UN-young I'm getting. Something about to make cool looking fireworks in the sky puts me into an adrenaline-fueled high.
TonyInDallas mentioned meteorites.
How about the woman at Oklahoma that was hit by space debris 1997 (Verified part of a USAF Missile that launched a satellite into orbit.).
david, see 4.8
david,
I saw her interviewed the other day.
Nightbreeeze,
Not saying all those listed were meteors, but I think there's enough to say some of them were.
And the dinosaurs might have something to say about not getting injured by a meteor...
Does anyone happen to remember that on the last Shuttle mission to the space station, there was concern about a possible hit from some space junk? If you add up enough near misses, sooner or later you get a hit!
No one was thinking about junk re-entry in 1991? Can anyone remember Sky-Lab? Wasn't that well before 1991 or is my age and failing memory showing?
If it is, just call me Al.....Al Heimer
That was 1979 ... That was a 77-ton structure, so you're right, they did devote some thought to where Skylab would be put down. The UARS mission planners just didn't fully work out the disposal plan for their six-ton satellite. They used as much fuel as they could to put it into a disposal orbit in 2005, but the satellite could not be brought down in a controlled way.
Gracias
Hope it doesn't hit me in the head, had enough damage there
A/noon Alan..Not sure where you get "put down'" for Skylab try "aimed" at Australia because of the large inland desert quote NASA. You guys had us lot ducking for cover that night... We were picking up Skylab bits and pieces for weeks in the desert and yes one piece landed less than 800 metres from a station (Homestead). Still NASA coughed up big $$ to get its bits back so that was one good thing. So happy landings, just so long as it is not us in the firing line again.
I was off work yesterday and just out of curiosity checked my homeowners policy. My house is NOT covered against falling space debris. I hadn't even noticed that before. Interesting that the insurance company would have even thought of including something like that.
sending it to the moon would have paid off i think..
Hey, ask the Nasa naysayers, this is not possible as Nasa cannot, nor has it ever, gone to the moon. So this is definitely not an alternative as it's impossible for anyone to ever go there.
Considering it costs about $1Billion per Shuttle launch, it is far cheaper to just let it fall to Earth. Factoring in costs to retrieve old satellites or cleanup the bits/pieces from launches would shutdown the space industry. Considering that GPS, DISH, DirectTV, XM/Sirius, and a host of other companies/nations rely on satellites, that would put tens if not hundreds of thousands of people out of work, put soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen at risk, and set space exploration back about 60 years or so.
LOL
Yep that would be about right Considering 60 years ago we had not even heard of sputnik yet.
Why isnt everyone talking about this? So we do have a chance of dying this friday and no one is saying anything!?
You have a chance of dying by slipping in the shower, tripping down some stairs, run over by a stampede of emu's, or whatever, but you don't see us talking about that either.
Mitchell
We have a chance of dying Friday, even without the satellites falling. I'm sure more people will be affected by car crashes than satellite crashes.
because with all the other risks of dying that you have on any particular day, this one is insignificant. I would worry more about a teenager taking you out with a car while texting, or food poisoning,
The number of 1 in 3200 for anyone in the world getting killed by debris. The chances of my examples killing any one on the globe...is likely at least a 100,000 times higher than that number (in other words hundreds or thousands die globaly daily from those risks)
Only id you live in China, S. America, Russia, Indiana or Florida. Yugoslavia no longer exista so those folks are safe, thank God.
If debris fall from the sky and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
No. Compression waves in the atmosphere are just compression waves. Sound is what you perceive when those compression waves move your eardrum. No ears = no sound.
So, if a lightswitch is turned on, and no one is around to see it, the bulb produces no light? Interesting.
The bulb would have not produced sight.
Hearing <> sound.
Light <> sight.
Physical / philosophical problem solved.
Wouldn't hearing line up with sight? sight<>hearing : senses
Wouln't light line up with sound? light<>sound : physical properties
Therefore, a tree or a satellite falling in the woods, with no one around to hear it, would make a sound. Just no one would hear it. Like a light with no one to see it is still light.
Thanks, Badeck, for helping prove that.
Yes, Tony. Semantics did that problem I first encountered in physics class.
As hearing is not sound, and light is not sight, therefore the answer to the OP's question is yes. The sound, as well as the light, could be picked up by instruments.
It needs to land right on the terrorists in afghanistan.
or congress
I'm all for congress.
3 votes for congress... I think we have a consensus.
Four votes and the motion passes!
How about we use one of our whiz-bang weapons and blow the damn thing up into very tiny chunks while it's still in space - which will then burn away in the atmosphere upon re-entry?
Those weapons are secret. If we use them, they won't be secret.
Jaques-
That would produce a gigantic cloud of very tiny chunks whizzing along at 5 MPS (18,000 MPH), most of which would be pushed back into a longer timetable before re-entry. THAT would damage MORE satelites, and thus escalate the problem exponentially.
Darn it.
I got my satellite parts posting all ready to put up on eBay.
That's great news. As long as America isn't in danger we can all stop caring about it now.
Indeed. Maybe if it falls on some aboriginal peoples they can worship it and we might have a third The Gods must Be Crazy. Ya, who cares if it falls on THEM. =)
The great and bloated bureaucracy that is our country often seems perplexed why people don't trust them to know what they say they know and tell the truth about the same.
But while all this pondering is taking place, the modern mainscream media wreaks havoc with the whole concept of truth. We can no longer just go looking for news... we have to wade through tons of worthless junk just to find a smidgen of fact. On top of that, those we elected to serve us; the people, instead serve special interests and corporate greasers who pay for the same representation we thought we were promised by a constitution.
So, here we are and NASA seems so frustrated that people fret about one of their machines falling from the sky. No matter how many times they say that all is well, nothing to see here... people persist in not believing them to the letter.
Well, if anyone from our glorious, gelatinous government is reading this... now you know why.
Why not, we are already sending our electronic wastes to third worlds, what's another satellite.
One of my client firms is in electronics recycling and making a lot of money recycling electronic gear and components. Now that markets exist for downstream processing, very little of this stuff goes towards landfills anymore.
"very little of this stuff goes towards landfills anymore." ? Proof.
ptownz,
Do your own research - I'm not here to educate you. I am a staunch environmentalist. I am merely stating that I am directly involved in a new and growing (highly profitable) industry. There are literally hundreds of new start ups in this business in my state (FL) alone. As this material is worth a fair amount of money, less and less will be disposed of as more is recycled.
They are lying thier asses off.
They know where and when within a fairly narrow window. The main variable would be how the sat breaks up.
Why lie?
That variable would count for the 500 to 6,000 mile fall zone. Which means they are not lying.
Bummer. I was hoping it would hit Seth McFarlane's house
A little late for this piece of orbiting junk but should a planned orbiter also be equipped with a certified method to remove it safely from orbit ... either enough extra propellent to send it into a sun-intercepting orbit (unlikely) or a method to bring it to Earth a a controllable point (mid-ocean if needed)?
According to the article, planning for a satellite's end of life is now standard procedure.
The difference here is that other satellite reentries like SKYLAB came down in one homogeneous piece that was able to be tracked. This thing is going to break up during reentry, which makes tracking trajectories extremely difficult. I would not be surprised (an not at all unlikely) if a piece of it crashes through someone's roof.
The bright side is that they will have a great story to tell their grandkids.
I would love to be around to witness how they dispose of the ISS. It probably will be a real blast...literally.
Being unable to track trajectories does not make hitting a house or a person any more likely. Skylab didn't come down in one piece, but one of the pieces that did come down was huge.