Rogue Satellite Terrorises Earth!
Comments: 5
What interesting times! Pre-emptive war, looting, SARS, Avril Lavigne, and now this. Some more space junk is coming back to haunt us.
Impact alert as X-ray satellite plummets to Earth
Jenny Hogan, New ScientistThirty-nine countries around the world are on impact alert, as an Italian satellite falls in an uncontrolled spiral towards Earth.
The 1400-kilogram BeppoSAX satellite is expected to break up as it enters the Earth’s atmosphere on Tuesday evening, showering the area below its flight path with chunks of metal. Its equatorial orbit has been decaying since the satellite was switched off in April 2002.
A report from the Italian Space Agency (ASI), issued at 1105 GMT on Tuesday, estimates that the debris will hit the surface between 2035 this evening and 0517 on Wednesday morning. But they do not know yet where it will land.
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Posted to Oh, the Humanity • 2003.04.29 (Tue) • 22:59
Comments
Posted by pete 2003.04.29, 23:42
“But they do not know yet where it will land.”
yet they can accurately work out all the stuff required to put a man on the moon in 1969 eh?
Posted by lil 2003.04.29, 23:49
Interesting article, Jeremy! It reminded me that I had found a photo essay this morning by Jonas Bendiksen about the people living in Kazakhstan, directly under the flight path of Russia’s satellite launching centre in Baikonur. According to that article, 3-6 space rocket debris (fuel tanks and booster engines) crash per month(!), providing a thriving business for scrap metal hawkers, as well as using the high grade metal to make farming tools. I wonder if anyone will be so resourceful with the remains of the BeppoSAX satellite.
Posted by jh 2003.04.30, 00:03
Someone should at least salvage a band name from it. Beppo Sax —- I think that’s kind of cool, don’t you?
Posted by joh3n 2003.04.30, 05:58
Kinda sad actually. Beppo Sax rvolutionized the field of Gamma Ray bursts, and spurred the creation a system by which telescopes on the groung that would stop whatever they were doing to look in the sky where Beppo Sax saw the burst.
Posted by niji 2003.04.30, 08:24
we can only hope that the PanaWave cult never hears about this one! what they could do with this story…one shudders to think.
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