This lottery costs you nothing unless you "win." A spent
NASA satellite which is reportedly about the size of a school
bus is orbiting the Earth at around 5 miles per second and is
due to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere sometime this evening or
near Midnight in the UK. It could conceivably crash anywhere on
Earth, but scientists think it will hit off the coast of Chile.
The thing weighs about 13-thousand pounds and has
actually been photographed tumbling in its last few orbits.
Where it actually comes back to Earth is not known for
sure because it is not under anybody's control as it is
non-functional. It will drop in altitude faster and faster and
eventually, it will begin to break up and burn in the upper
atmosphere. Most of it will disappear, there, but it is expected
that 25 or 26 pieces are substantial enough to survive all the
way to the ground.
Since 75% of the Earth is covered by water, the odds are
very good that it will splash in to the ocean somewhere and hurt
nothing, but there is always that chance it could hit land that
is populated.
There have been a number of pieces of space junk that
did hit land, but nobody has yet been injured or killed. I
imagine nobody will be hit this time, either, but this is a
lottery I would rather not win unless you look at it as the
looser gets clobbered and the rest of us win.
The odds are much more likely that we will be in a car
accident or even get hit by lightning than that we will ever be
near or hit by falling space junk.
The increase in Solar activity this year means that
things that are in orbit can be nudged in to different orbits so
working satellites and the International Space Station actually
have to fire off rocket engines every so often to correct their
orbit and stay where they should be.
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