debris

Dead satellite likely fell into Pacific Ocean--maybe

NASA's decommissioned 6.3-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, out of gas and out of control after two decades in space, plunged back into the atmosphere early Saturday, heating up, breaking apart, and presumably showering chunks of debris along a 500-mile-long Pacific Ocean impact zone.

Maybe.

U.S. Strategic Command radar tracking indicated re-entry would occur around 12:16 a.m. EDT (GMT-4) Saturday as the satellite was descending across the Pacific Ocean on a southwest-to-northeast trajectory approaching Canada's west coast. If re-entry occurred on or before the predicted time, any wreckage that survived atmospheric heating almost certainly fell … Read more

Derelict NASA satellite falls back to Earth

NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, out of gas and out of control after two decades in space, plunged back into the atmosphere early Saturday, heating up, breaking apart and presumably showering chunks of debris along a 500-mile-long downrange impact zone.

But NASA officials could not immediately confirm where or exactly when the satellite came down, saying only that re-entry occurred during a two-hour period.

"NASA's decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite fell back to Earth between 11:23 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 23, and 1:09 a.m. EDT Sept. 24," the agency said in a … Read more

Heads up! NASA satellite descends toward fiery doom

NASA's decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, out of gas and out of control, is not descending toward re-entry as rapidly as expected, officials say, likely delaying the satellite's kamikaze plunge to Earth by a few hours, to late Friday or early Saturday.

Experts expect more than two dozen chunks of debris to survive re-entry and hit the ground in a 500-mile-long footprint somewhere along the satellite's orbital track. But given the bus-size 6.3-ton's satellite's trajectory and the vast areas of ocean and sparsely populated areas UARS passes over, experts say it is unlikely any … Read more

What happens when you get hit by space junk

There are those who believe you should be fully prepared for anything.

You know, the sort of folks who put chocolate, torches, and other items into a bag you normally use for workout clothing and leave it near the back door. For luck.

But how can you prepare for the entirely infinitesimal possibility that you will be hit by a piece of space junk in a couple of days?

Wait, perhaps you have been away fishing with an NBA player. So let me catch you up. NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite will be falling to earth probably on Friday. … Read more

NASA satellite soon to return to Earth... in pieces

Almost 20 years to the day after it was launched into space to collect data on Earth's atmosphere and interactions with the sun, NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite is coming back home--in pieces--and there's a higher than normal chance one of them will hit someone.

But before you run to grab your diamond and titanium alloy umbrella that I know you have somewhere in the back of the hall closet for just such an occasion, it's important to note that there's only a 1 in 21 trillion chance that a piece of the space junk will hit you specifically, according to an AP report. A NASA scientist apparently told the AP that there is a 1 in 3,200 chance that a piece of the satellite will hit someone on Earth, which is much higher than the 1 in 10,000 threshold NASA has adopted as an acceptable risk. That rule was put in place after the UARS satellite was launched in 1991.

CNET attempted to confirm the figure, but NASA's East Coast media headquarters is closed for the day. We've reached out through other channels, but did not immediately receive a response. I called U.S. Strategic Command at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which also houses the Joint Space Operations Center that "works around the clock detecting, identifying, and tracking all manmade objects in Earth orbit, including space junk," according to a NASA release.

A communications officer there told me that she believed NASA had worked with another agency to come up with a risk model for the UARS re-entry. NASA often uses software called--in typical NASA naming style--ORSAT, for Object Re-entry Survival Analysis Tool, to figure these sorts of things out.

Point is, NASA says in a posting on its Web site, there's a very small risk of a piece of UARS damaging anything or anyone.… Read more

Space laser proposed to zap space junk

What to do with all the space junk now in orbit around Earth? Each year, that question grabs a headline or two before disappearing. But that doesn't mean the problem is getting any closer to resolution.

In fact, just the opposite: scientists warn that the risk of a collision between debris objects in low-Earth orbit and a space craft remains a real risk. In 2009, Hugh Lewis, a lecturer in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Southampton, predicted that the threat posed by space debris would climb by 50 percent in this decade. Perhaps the most high-profile incident occurred … Read more

Pentagon: Space junk could knock out your cell phone

You have probably become used to dropped calls. It is a fact of life, like sofas that won't stay clean and bankers who won't be reasonable.

I would, however, like to warn you that there might soon be a new reason for your conversations about bars, cars, and Mars to be rudely curtailed. Yes, even if you have a Verizon iPhone 4.

You see, space debris might have simply smacked into your Verizon satellite, rendering it just another exploding piece of metal.

I am passing this along from the Telegraph, which passed it along from the Pentagon.

This … Read more

How to solve iPhone volume problems by cleaning your headphone jack

One frustration many iPhone (or any Apple device with headphones) owners will undoubtedly experience is a situation where their handset remains in headphones mode, despite no headphones being plugged in.

The solution to this problem can be quite easy, though a steady hand is recommended.

Symptoms If this situation occurs, you'll most likely figure it out pretty quickly:

You slide to unlock your iPhone and the "click" sound is not heard. You press the volume buttons to increase or decrease the ringer and the headphones volume setting appears instead. You launch applications, games, or videos that normally … Read more

Brits use radar to keep runways free of debris

On July 25, 2000, an Air France Concorde ran over a piece of titanium debris while taking off from Charles de Gaulle International Airport. Minutes later 113 people perished in a ball of fire.

Most airports rely on visual inspections to keep runways clear of foreign objects and prevent what happened in France, but Heathrow International Airport, the world's busiest, has now installed a permanent dual radar system called the Tarsier, which scans 3,658 meters of runway in search of junk 24 hours a day.

The Tarsier uses networked high-frequency, high-resolution radar and integrated digital signal processing to … Read more