Danger: NASA’s 6-ton Satellite On Its Way to Crash

NASA warned us this week that there would be a risk of being hit by falling debris of one of its satellites – a six-ton monster – which is out of orbit – and hence, out of control too. While announcing the danger, Nicholoas Johnson, the chief scientist for space debris, did some maths to minimize the anxiety of the 7-billion strong earthlings.

The massive satellite in question belongs to NASA’s URAS category – Upper Atmosphere Research Satellites. Launched in 1991, it has been in orbit up until recently before being subjected to the hostile influence by the upper layers of earth’s atmosphere, which in the end forced it to deviate from the very orbit that gave it a stable path to move along for well over two decades.

Mr Johnson calculated the odds of getting hit by something in orbit; they are 1 in 21 trillion. The people in the newsroom may have heaved a quiet sigh of relief while digesting the figures. In the same breath, however, he raised the pulse of billions of inhabitants of the blue planet: the chances of getting hit by NASA’s UARS are 1 in 3,200; very risky, indeed.

The satellite could crash any time between the end of September and early October. So, NASA feels it is high time earthlings were advised to brace themselves for the calamity. That’s exactly what they did.

It is fairly common that malfunctioning satellites end up crashing into the earth. So what’s the fuss about this particular one? Perhaps, it has a fairly large chunk of metals which may fall from the sky, in the event of it entering into the atmosphere. NASA estimates that the debris may scatter along a length of 500 miles – known as debris footprint. Although, NASA rules out the possibility of hazardous material on board, it warns earthling against coming into contact with the debris when it falls.

We can draw very little comfort from NASA’s calculations, despite three quarters of our planet being the oceans. So, heavily populated cities - from Shanghai to New Delhi in the east - and major cities in the northern hemisphere, seem to be vulnerable to the impending disaster.

The satellite which cost $750 millions for the US taxpayers, was launched in 1991 to study the climate change. The growing audience of sceptics of this ‘phenomenon’ would see the fall of the featureless-metal-creature as bad omen for the global movement for climate change itself and feel that it would suffer the same fate of the faulty satellite - before being subjected to a similar spectacular crash on the planet of academia.

The inglorious end of the UARS and the cost collectively leave NASA at an embarrassing corner in the arena of space exploration. Having abandoned its space shuttle programme, the agency needs much bigger headlines than reporting the crashes of ill-fated space junk, if it wants to convince the American public to cough up funds for its highly-ambitious projects.

In short, the space agency has to walk in a straight line before making sure satellites follow the curvy path for a prolonged period of time.

- Asian Tribune -