Russia Says Falling U.S. Satellite No Problem
“Some parts of the satellite will be burnt in dense atmosphere, and only small parts, for example the engine unit, could fall on the Earth. This is not the case when rush should be kicked up,” Puzanov said.
According to Sergei Puzanov, a NASA representative at the Russian Mission Control center in Moscow, the uncontrolled reentry of the falling U.S. satellite is not a threat to Earth. According to Puzanov, after the Earth being continuously bombarded b meteorites, the fall if the satellite is not a problem. But what has become a problem is the secret situation regarding the U.S. spying satellite, which is surrounding this uncontrolled reentry of the satellite. And nobody is talking, needless to say.
The debris which will survive the intense heat from the falling satellite will most likely fall into the ocean, which is about 70% of the Earth’s surface, said Gordon Johndroe, White House National Security Council spokesman. “Given that 75 percent of the Earth is covered in water and much of the land is uninhabited, the likely percentage of this satellite or any debris falling into a populated area is very small,” he said, also adding, “However, the U.S. government was monitoring the satellite and examining different options to ‘mitigate any damage.’ ”
Meteorites from space are simply fragments of rocks traveling in an elliptical pattern, orbiting around the sun. They basically travel through space at the same speed as Earth, but are recognized as meteoroids before encountering our planet. And it is only when the orbital paths of the Earth and the meteoroid intersect on a chance occurrence, does the meteoroid enter the earth’s atmosphere. Rapidly slowed down because of the air’s frictions, a lot of excess heat is formed which causes the meteoroid to flare brightly and occasionally explode. This exploding flare is then recognized as a meteor.
Over the past years, meteorites have increased in numbers, with as many as 50 meteorites a year being observed. These newly found meteorites have more than doubled in the past year, with the discovery of thousands of new meteorites on the Antarctic ice. Not just new falls, they have fallen over hundreds of thousands of years, but have been preserved in the Antarctic ice. Prior to this find, only 2,000 meteorites have been recorded in the entire world, but since then 10,000 plus fragments have been recovered.
This entry was posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 at 2:53 am and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
