Bullets from Space!

We successfully dodged the remains of NASA's UARS satellite that splashed down in the Pacific last night. My confidence level in NASA's ability wasn't raised by its frequent updates on where and when the thing was going to crash back to earth - which amounted to a tacit admission of "Darned if we know!" and which definitely makes me nervous when we get our next brush with big space debris at the end of October.

That's right, this time a big German satellite will come blasting back in through the atmosphere and land who knows where. It's 2.4 tons of German engineering and we all know that whatever other deficiencies the Germans suffer from, they make great machinery. As much as 532 Kg or about 1170 lbs will hit Mother Earth somewhere, hopefully not in the middle of some local movie theater or McDonald's. Maybe the Germans are better at calculating these things than NASA. If not, I guess we should just start a betting pool as to where (or who) this celestial trash will hit and then duck and cover on the appointed day.

www.newscientist.com/article/dn20955-second-big-satellite-set-to-resist-reentry-burnup.html