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.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary