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Nasa's Uars Satellite Falls Off West Coast Of Us by callydon(m): 8:22am On Sep 26, 2011 |
Nasa says its six-tonne UARS satellite plunged to Earth over the Pacific Ocean, off the US west coast. It appears likely the decommissioned craft came down between 03:23 and 05:09 GMT - with a best estimate of 04:16. If correct, this means any debris that survived to the surface probably went into water and not on land. The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is the largest American space agency satellite to return uncontrolled into the atmosphere in about 30 years. The fall to Earth was monitored by the Joint Space Operations Center (JSPOC) at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Its best estimate for the timing of the re-entry would have seen UARS come in at a point well out into the North Pacific. However, if UARS re-entered many minutes after 04:16, it is possible debris could have reached the American landmass. There were some unconfirmed reports of glowing wreckage moving across the sky in western Canada, but Nasa said it had yet to receive credible evidence that this was so, less still that any debris items had been found. "I've got no reports that I've seen that talk about people who think they might have recovered debris," Nick Johnson, Nasa's chief scientist for orbital debris at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, told reporters during a media teleconference. "Obviously, we're going to continue to keep our eyes and ears open, and if we receive any reports like that we'll try to go verify." Most of the 20-year-old satellite should simply have burnt up on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, but modelling work indicated perhaps 500kg could have survived to the surface. Calculations estimated this material would have been scattered over an 800km path. Nonetheless, with more than 70% of the Earth's surface covered by water, many experts had offered the view in recent weeks that an ocean grave was going to be the most probable outcome for UARS. |
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