A 6 tonne NASA science satellite pierced the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean and fell back to Earth, the US space agency said yesterday, but it was not yet known where the remains landed.
NASA said its decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), which took an unpredictable course as it tumbled through the upper atmosphere, fell to Earth sometime between 3:23am and 5:09am GMT.
“The precise re-entry time and location are not yet known with certainty,” NASA said of the 20-year-old satellite.
There were reports on Twitter of debris falling over Okotoks, a town south of Calgary in Western Canada, most likely satellite remains.
Stretching 10.6m long and 4.5m in diameter, UARS was among the largest spacecraft to plummet uncontrollably through the atmosphere, although it is a slim cousin to NASA’s 75 tonne Skylab station, which crashed to Earth in 1979.
Russia’s last space station, the 135 tonne Mir, crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2001, but it was a guided descent.
NASA now plans for the controlled re-entry of large spacecraft, but it did not when UARS was designed.
The 5,897kg satellite was dispatched into orbit by a space shuttle crew in 1991 to study ozone and other chemicals in Earth’s atmosphere. It completed its mission in 2005 and had been slowly losing altitude ever since, pulled by the planet’s gravity.
Most of the spacecraft burned up during the fiery plunge through the atmosphere, but about 26 individual pieces, weighing a total of about 500kg, could have survived the incineration.
The debris field could span about 805km, but exactly where it is located depends on when UARS descended.
With most of the planet covered in water and vast uninhabited deserts and other land directly beneath the satellite’s flight path, the chance that someone would be hit by falling debris was one-in-3,200, NASA said.
“The risk to public safety is very remote,” it said.
The satellite flew over most of the planet, traveling between 57 degrees north latitude and 57 degrees south latitude.
UARS was one of about 20,000 pieces of space debris in orbit around Earth. An object the size of UARS falls back into the atmosphere about once a year.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS