Uploaded with Comments by slatester
September 22, 2011
A NASA research satellite is expected to hit Earth in the coming days.
Most of the six-ton, 35-foot long satellite will burn up on re-entry into the atmosphere, but 26 large chunks are expected to hit Earth’s surface. Exactly where they will crash is hard to predict, but NASA does say the satellite is not expected to be over North America when it re-enters. It is the largest satellite to fall back to Earth uncontrolled since Skylab in 1979.
The chance of any one person being struck by debris is approximately 1 in 21 trillion, but the odds that someone on Earth might be hit are about 1 in 3,200.
In 1997, an Oklahoma woman got hit by a piece of space junk and lived to tell about it.
Add comment