login
Become a member
Quick Registration
Full Registration Benefits -
Free Homepages for Doctors
Free Homepages for Hospitals
Free Homepages for Medical Conference
Free Homepages for NGO's
Personal Health Record Creation
Access to all Medical Slides
Access to all Jobs & Products Sale
Falling Satellite Unlikely to Pose Threat to Human Life
January 29, 2008 at 11:58 AM
General Health News
According to the report, the satellite should break up during re-entry, leaving tea-tray-sized chunks of debris to crash land sometime in late February or early March.
Although the impact area is currently unknown, these chunks of metal are most likely to land somewhere in the ocean or on an uninhabited landmass.
The out-of-control satellite is widely believed to be an experimental imaging craft launched by US military in December 2006. Its communication and propulsion systems failed shortly after launch and it was only a matter of time before the craft came back down to Earth.
Normally, when a satellite re-enters the atmosphere at the end of its life, there is some control over the trajectory. In the current case, the descent will be completely uncontrolled, making when and where it will land a matter of guesswork, the report said.
But experts like Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts, US, see little to be concerned about.
"Junk has been falling out of the sky for 40 years and at worst there have been a few cases of minor property damage," he told New Scientist.
According to McDowell, most of the debris that makes it through re-entry will be considerably smaller than the spent rocket stages that jettison during satellite launches.
|
|
|
 Comment & Contribute
|
Medwonders Health Network
- Health News Index
|
|
- News Quick Links
| News Categories: |
| » | Scientists Develop Compound That Triggers Cancer Cell Death |
| » | Iraqi National Hopes to Find Affordable Treatment for His Cancer in India |
| » | New Technique can Help Doctors Detect Pancreatic Cancer |
| » | Colorectal Cancer Risk Factors Probed |
| » | Breast MRI 'Better Than Clinical Approach for Predicting Chemotherapy's Efficiency' |
| More Cancer News | |
|
