Satellite falling to Earth

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Since satellites have been falling to Earth for many rears without ever hitting anyone the 1 in 3200 figure seems like it could be on the high side, but I guess NASA wouldn't really want to inflate the risk... I wonder if this satellite is a lot bigger than average at six tons and therefore will make a larger debris field?
 
1 in 3,200? Yeah right! Odds arent much better than that that it will hit land, let alone a person. The Earth is nearly 75% water and nearly 90% of people on Earth live on around 10% of the land. Yeah, chances are small that anyone will be hit.

You have a better chance at hitting the powerball.
 
i heard everyone was going crazy buying protection for their head. can't find a single condom within a 50 mile radius of me.
 
The 1 in 3,200 is a misquoted stat. When you extrapulate that to the amount of people in the area that debirs could realistically fall the real odds to you are a person is 1 in 20 trillion when you factor the amount of people on Earth.

Space is a funny thing. I work for a company that makes one of the only space analysis SW platforms out there. In fact most videos you are seeing about this sat are from us. That said sooo many things can happen in space that people seem to have no clue about. You run the gambit from solar flares, man made debris, space debris, ect. SOOO many things that affect a satelite. In this instance this one is out of fuel but due to unforseen circumstances it is on a wobbly flight path thus limiting projections of its re-entry.

When it does re-enter no one knows how many pieces it will break into nor at what point of re-entry it will do so. That will determine the amout of debris that makes it through as well as where it lands. Chances are this one and its pieces will land in the ocean and not harm a soul. This is why when shooting down the US Spy satelite last year was such a highly looked into event. The US had to ensure it landed in the ocean where they could either retrieve it or have it be where no one else could get it.

China on the other hand just blew up a satelite about 2-3 years ago with their laser which polluted the sky with a crap load of debris that flies all over the place.


An even scarier thing to know when you consider what all we use satelites for now is that within every 24 hour day we have about 374 alerts of collisions either between 2 satelites or with some form of debris. Sure those alerts are sometimes when they are still 5 miles or so apart but in space that is like two cars sitting with a few hairs between their bumpers...
 
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