"Dead" NASA Satellite Coming Back to Earth
The sky isn't following, but an old NASA satellite is.
A dead 6.5 ton NASA UARS satellite would make its re-entry into Earth's atmosphere on Friday, Sept. 23, bringing along a chance to watch a spectacular sky show. But NASA is still not sure where on Earth the satellite would land.
NASA added that the debris from the defunct satellite would not cause harm to humans.
NASA conducted a detailed re-entry risk assessment for UARS in 2002 and it showed that the debris from
UARS is not harmful to human beings. Following are the excerpts of the study:
* Number of potentially hazardous objects expected to survive: 26
* Total mass of objects expected to survive: 532 kg
* Estimated human casualty risk (updated to 2011): About 1 in 3200
Re-entry is expected sometime during Firday afternoon, Eastern Daylight Time. However, NASA said the satellite will not be passing over North America during that time period.
One can track the UARS satellite real-time at n2yo.com, a site created exclusively for FoxNews.
The 20-year-old satellite of the size of a bus was originally expected to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere either late September or early October but the re-entry has advanced due to a sharp increase in solar activity since the beginning of this week.
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