FOXSYLVANIA

 – – Perhaps Chicken Little was on to something after all…a dead climate satellite about the size of a school bus is expected to plummet back to Earth around Friday, September 23rd or Saturday, September 24th.  While most of it will disintegrate in the atmosphere, over two dozen pieces weighing a total of about 1,200 lbs. are still expected to survive re-entry, the largest weighing about 300 pounds.  If such were to hit you on the head, it would probably ruin your whole day!

While this is the most massive NASA satellite to make an uncontrolled re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere in more than three decades, not to worry…the odds of the big nasty hitting anyone anywhere in the world are about 1-in-3,200.  The odds of you getting hit personally are on the magnitude of 1-in-21-trillion, meaning that you are much more likely to be struck by lightning or eaten by a shark than to be hit by a piece of the UARS satellite! 

Anyways, a killer satellite might really enliven an otherwise dull weekend…so “Look to the skies!”

This entry was posted on September 23, 2011 at 12:46 am and is filed under science, space, strange happenings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: falling UARS satellite