Who’s going to win the falling satellite lottery? NASA says “um, well, you see”
NASA on Friday warned there was still a small chance that remnants of a falling research satellite could end up in parts of the U.S., though scientists weren’t able to predict the precise trajectory or exactly when the space junk would reach the ground.
The difficulty of pinpointing where the parts will land highlights broader international concerns about tracking more than 20,000 pieces of orbiting space debris, some no larger than a football. Experts say the debris poses a potential threat to commercial and military satellites, as well as to the international space station.
So, with all the computers, all the observations, all the long term data, NASA isn’t quite sure. See, it’s complicated
“There are many variables that make predicting where a satellite will fall back to Earth very complicated. The reentry of UARS this evening is consistent with the modeling we prepared at Aerospace,” Dr. William Ailor (director of the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies) added.
Uh huh. But, certain people at NASA tell us with 100% certainty that anthropogenic global warming will warm the planet beyond what is safe for life in 5-100 years, despite all the myriad of causes, such as greenhouse gases, the Sun, volcanoes, ocean currents, glaciers, polar caps, land use, and other things that create climate, as they all interact, being “complicated.”
Morning update: Apparently, it re-entered the atmosphere over the Pacific, and NASA has no clue where any pieces might have landed. But, don’t worry, they know the Earth will burn and every glacier will melt in 50-100 years.
Could this be because this satellite was a super-secret satellite that had duties that no one was supposed to know about. And the CIA doesn’t want anyone to really know where it lands. Because , if they find it, the people will know that it was used to spy on people in their living rooms and kitchens to determine if people are using less salt?
[…] NASA Unsure About Falling Satellite, 100% Sure Globull Warming Will Kill Us All […]
Or maybe like the Soviet weather satellite at the end of the movie “Maximum Overdrive”?
Also, I thought it was funny how they said earlier one of the issues complicating things was solar activity. While that might apply to like the asteroid belt or the Oort cloud (far enough away where small change there means big change here), the satellite was orbiting Earth. Practically already on the surface by astronomical measurements.
Oh, cool, “Who Made Who” by AC/Dc is on YouTube!