UPDATE: a later statement from NASA below says N. Pacific off the U.S. West coast, teleconference scheduled. See below.
NASA confirms that the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) has entered Earth’s atmosphere and burned/broken up. Some Twitter reports say debris was seen over eastern Canada, but unconfirmed as of this writing. No video or photos of re-entry yet. This just in from Spaceflightnow.com
0720 GMT (3:20 a.m. EDT)
RE-ENTRY CONFIRMED. The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, launched from the shuttle Discovery in 1991 to begin a new era of studying the Earth’s environment from space, has fallen from orbit.
But NASA still doesn’t know exactly when or where the re-entry happened.
“NASA’s decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite fell back to Earth between 11:23 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 23 and 1:09 a.m. EDT Sept. 24. The satellite was passing eastward over Canada and Africa as well as vast portions of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans during that period. The precise re-entry time and location are not yet known with certainty,” the space agency says.
Natural processes caused the large spacecraft’s orbital altitude to gradually lower over time, finally tumbling into the atmosphere today where it burned up. It had spent 7,316 days in space.
NASA expected 26 fragments of the satellite would survive the superhot re-entry and hit the ground, such as titanium fuel tanks, antenna structures and beryllium brackets. The combined mass of the pieces was predicted to be 1,173 pounds (532 kg).
Authorities urge anyone finding the satellite pieces to avoid touching the objects and contact local officials.
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Twitter went crazy with all sorts of junk and fake reports tonight, I thought this was was the most troubling/amusing:
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UPDATE: Statement from NASA
NASA’s decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite fell back to Earth between 11:23 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 23 and 1:09 a.m. EDT Sept. 24. The Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California said the satellite entered the atmosphere over the North Pacific Ocean, off the west coast of the United States. The precise re-entry time and location of any debris impacts are still being determined. NASA is not aware of any reports of injury or property damage.
This is your source for official information on the re-entry of UARS. All information posted here has been verified with a government agency or law enforcement.
NASA will conduct a media telecon at 2 p.m. ET to discuss the re-entry. The telecon will be streamed live at www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.
UPDATE2: From the NASA teleconference via spaceflightnow.com
Nick Johnson, chief scientist with NASA’s Orbital Debris Program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, says the space agency has received “no credible” reports of observers seeing the UARS re-entry. Officials think the satellite most likely fell into atmosphere over the open Pacific Ocean around 12 a.m. EDT (0400 GMT) and the surviving debris would have landed in the sea before reaching North America.
I really think you are being too harsh. Once it hits the atmosphere, it’s basically a meteor. Usually the only way those are found is when someone reports the crater. The shuttle was easier to track because they had radio telemetry coming from it until just before breakup. And tumbling debris is very hard to predict; ever play the game where you drop the quarter through the slot into water and try to make it land on a paddle or something? Now, factor in ludicrous-speed lateral motion, and 100 miles of fluid atmosphere, plus the breakup altering the size and drag profile of the object, and +/-6000 miles doesn’t sound too bad at that point.
RB says:
September 24, 2011 at 8:46 am
I loved the report on the BBC yesterday.
NASA say the debris is more likely to fall in the sea than on land.
BBC? NASA? “more likely”?
No more questions, thank you. 😀
Can’t we encourage any official authority to classify satellite debris as a pollutant?
Just saying.
/sarc
>>Flashback<< Free Tacos for US if MIR hits floating Taco Bell inflatable satellite catcher.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=4152
I don't know if any group tried to cash in on this crash but that was one of the greatest publicity stunts ever, in my mind.
Okay, here is a detailed report of what happened to the satellite.
Maybe NASA should cut back on Muslim outreach and bogus climate science and get back to some real science. This does not give me great confidence in our missile defense capability.
Well when people complained about the lousy brakes (re-entry system) of some of those old classic Bugatti race cars; Ettore Bugatti is reported to have said: “I build my cars to go; not to stop.”
So evidently does NASA. I can’t believe that in 1991, NASA would launch something without a suicide pill bult into it.
“”””” RB says:
September 24, 2011 at 8:46 am
I loved the report on the BBC yesterday.
NASA say the debris is more likely to fall in the sea than on land.
FFS. “””””
I’m not a betting man, but if I was I’d give you 3 to 1 odds on that bet.
Fortunately, NASA can tell us what globull warming is going to do in 50-100 years. But, they can’t forecast nor find their satellite. Great.
HalfEmpty says:
September 24, 2011 at 2:53 am
Bush would never have allowed an out-of-control space shoe to hit him.
They should have nominated him for that performance.
Here it is:
http://youtu.be/2OfWgu5jk5g
Actually, IIRC ICBMs are tracked from the ground up until they get into orbit, at which point I believe they are ballistic (not under power.) Most radars are then looking for the launch, and algorithms are used to predict where the ballistic trajectory will take them. We don’t regularly have a whole lot of (if any) radar pointing up into the sky, strong enough to detect objects in space – it would be a nightmare to install and maintain, particularly for objects that small. From a signal processing perspective, a radar system that can track a decaying orbital object from orbit to impact is ridiculously complex.
Mark
Funny…. I known, physical entity, observable, and everyone focused on it. Yet, with all the computational horsepower and known physical characteristics, proven tracking formulas, NASA doesn’t know where it is.
Yet… NASA has the ability to predict climate 50 years out based on variables we know very little about.
Thinking “Tipping Point” is the great name for a bar down the street from Hansen’s office. Hence, “We’ve reached the Tipping Point…”. What we never hear is the rest of the sentence…. “We’ve reached the Tipping Point, and I’ll have a Maker’s Mark, neat.”
Looks like it missed Washington, DC.
Better luck next time.
SRB says:
September 24, 2011 at 8:46 am
I loved the report on the BBC yesterday.
NASA say the debris is more likely to fall in the sea than on land.
FFS.
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My math says about 3:1 for ocean
Ric Werme says:
September 24, 2011 at 6:14 am
NASA looks out, NASA looks in at wide areas of slowly changing stuff. They aren’t tasked with the job of tracking space junk. Perhaps you should learn what NASA does and then offer justifiable criticism.
If you really want to find where the satellite burned up, talk to the military. They look for missile launch signatures – small, fast streaks of hot exhaust gases that they have to sort out from meteors. And returning satellites.
Ric, that’s like saying it isn’t a cops job to keep track of his patrol car or side arm, because it’s not in his job description.
Because you have an arbitrarily shaped object that hits the atmosphere at 18,000 mph with an arbitrary position and immediately begins to break up in an arbitrary manner that we can’t really compute. There’s so many unknowns that it would have been impossible to tell other than “it will enter the upper portion of the atmosphere approximately here.”
Mark
So Hansen and NASA GISS can model an extremely complex system with absolute certainty for decades into the future, but NASA cannot model an atmospheric effect on a known object for a period of 12 hours. Astounding that man Hansen.
Canada again. What are we a friendly target or what? Looks like Alberta near Calgary. Let’s see 26+ counts of littering.
There’s a video supposedly showing the pieces of the satellite reentering over Alberta.
Last night there was a report of long streaks on the Environment Canada Radar in the Calgary area. I captured an image and posted a brief article here:
http://pathstoknowledge.net/2011/09/24/canada-hit-by-nasa-satellite-nasa-to-be-hit-by-littering-bill-from-canada
No, NASA wouldn’t need to track debris reentry because, as others pointed out, there are people at NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) whose duties include that specifically. Or at least, there were. My knowledge is many, many years old.
Anyway, NORAD would probably share the info with NASA if they were asked politely.
Schitzree says:
September 24, 2011 at 11:26 am
How many cops track the patrol cars that were retired from service 10-15 years ago?
If the satellite were still operational, then they’d likely be able to track it through a TDRS satellite until Loss of Signal and that would be a decent indicator of reentry.
I have no idea if UARS used TDRS, but with the high inclination, there’d be good reasons to have it talk via TDRS.
All systems are goo.
Lead headline on my Google New Homepage just now:
Somehow seems IPCC-esque
Interesting how the media jump all over NASA with this kind of thing but swallow everything they say regarding climate.
I,m pretty sick of Russia , the U.S.A. and China dropping all their spent crap in the S.W. Pacific . Poor “Bloop-_ what about it’s environment ,all this space poop falling from a great height on it , talk about “Rods from God” or “Gods crap” .But in all seriousness if Norad couldn’t pick this satellite upon re-entry, it bodes badly for the U.S.A. and their much vaunted missile launch detection and tracking systems .The back door for attack would be bloody obvious to any other antagonists .
Can’t Resist – (SarcOn) – There should be a long streak of CO2 from the time it, and it’s pieces, started burning and all the way to impact. This tell-tale evidence should be available to anyone of a number of UN, IPCC, NASA, DOD, EPA, NOAA, CIA, FBI, ESA, CSA, RSA, and other agencies around the world. Once the President of the World CO2 and Hot Air Society, Al “Fat Albert” Gore, approves the release of this information, detailed data of incalcuable value will be released via select and member “GREEN” MSM outlets around the world. The increased cost of this information will go toward offsetting the vast expense of eliminating these poisonous gases from the earth’s atmosphere over the next 374 years. More information will be released to select members as it becomes available. (SarcOff)
Like I said, couldn’t resist. Wonder who will publish the first of many historic Scientific Papers on this great human fiasco?