By Paul Recer
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Any debris that reached Earth from a falling satellite probably crashed somewhere in Egypt, NASA officials said today.
The agency announced that any pieces of the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer satellite that survived a fiery fall through the atmosphere would have hit central Egypt about 11:15 p.m. EST Wednesday. The announcement is based on an analysis of radar tracking by a military agency that monitors orbiting craft, NASA said in an announcement.
The 7,000-pound science satellite began falling from orbit Wednesday and NASA updated its predicted landing site throughout the day and evening.
Before the final announcement, the agency had said the probable landing site of any debris would be the Persian Gulf. Earlier, the prediction had been northeastern Brazil.
There was no radio communications with the satellite, and its orbital path was determined only by radar skin tracking. As a result, predictions for its landing site changed frequently as readings measuring its rate of fall and angle into the atmosphere varied from minute to minute.
“The actual location of re-entry was within the predicted orbit track,” said Scott Hull, a NASA engineer at the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. He said the spacecraft could have come in at a number of points along its ground track.
There were no immediate reports of debris from the satellite hitting the Earth and official Egyptian sources denied that any pieces came down in Egypt.
The falling satellite was radar tracked by the U.S. Space Command Space Control Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Engineers said the satellite was not designed to re-enter the atmosphere and had been expected to start breaking up after encountering the atmosphere, about 50 miles high. Most of the craft was expected to burn up in the atmosphere during its high-speed fall. NASA engineers, however, predicted that up to nine stainless steel and titanium pieces, weighing up to 100 pounds, could reach the Earth’s surface.
Any satellite pieces that survived the fall were expected to land in a debris field stretching some 625 miles under the orbital path.
In 2000, NASA engineers successfully directed a safe de-orbit of the 17-ton Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, using rockets aboard the satellite to bring it down in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.
The Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer, however, had no onboard rockets to direct re-entry.
The largest uncontrolled re-entry by a NASA spacecraft was Skylab, a 78-ton abandoned space station that fell from orbit in 1979. Its debris dropped harmlessly into the Indian Ocean and across a remote section of western Australia.
Launched in 1992, the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer collected images of more than 1,000 celestial objects detected in the extreme ultraviolet part of the spectrum. The craft was designed to work for three years, but it was operational for eight. The observation program ended last year.
Copyright ©2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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