After UARS, a German satellite to crash-land on Earth
20 Oct 2011
Berlin: A 1.7 tonnes German satellite, the size of a car, is expected to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere over the weekend, officials said on Wednesday. They also confessed they had no idea where the burnt-out debris from the satellite was likely to land.
The X-ray observatory, named ROSAT, is expected to return to Earth sometime between 22-23 October, travelling at a speed of around 28,000 kilometres (17,000 miles) per hour, the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) said in a statement.
The DLR also said they could be slightly more accurate about the re-entry date as the satellite nears the Earth's atmosphere.
"This time slot of uncertainty will be reduced as the date of re-entry approaches," it said.
According to the latest estimates, as many as 30 individual pieces weighing a total of 1.7 tonnes could make it back to the Earth's surface.
"The largest single fragment will probably be the telescope's mirror, which is very heat resistant," the centre said.
According to experts, statistically there was very little danger to humans from space junk with the debris almost certainly likely to fall in the sea or on uninhabited land.
Last month, a six-tonne, bus-sized US satellite, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), plunged into the Pacific Ocean off California, NASA said, without any reliable sightings or accounts of damage.
