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NASA's HETE Coming Down
terrymr writes "NASA expects the High Energy Transient Experiment spacecraft which failed to successfully detach from the third stage of its launch rocket in 1996 to fall to earth within the next few days. While most of the spacecraft will likely burn up in the upper atmosphere there is a good chance that the spacecraft's batteries (weighing 33lbs each) may reach the ground intact. Current predictions put re-entry at 4:41 EDT Sunday April 7 (+/- two days)."
Before the sky falls. Anyone might perish under the batteries crashing down. Live your life to the fullest before you no longer habe the change.
I simply refuse to believe that's possible...anyhow, as if science can prove anything.
They would have kept going, and going, and going...
They must'a used these instead...
-RickTheWizKid
Too early... that's supposed to read "have the chance" at the end. I think I'm going to sleep those days away.
/me wonders whether items will appear on ebay before they even land...
-- ribbit
Hmm..anyone care to explain that?
Does anyone know how to bring this up with NASA's tracking program?
Reminds me of when Skylab fell to earth, dumping pieces of itself over Western Australia. The local president of the town council, Mervin Andre, gave the Director of NASA a littering ticket when chunks of the disintegrating space station dropped over the area southeast of Perth. The ticket remains unpaid to this day, although the council later waived the fine anyway.
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
What are the chances of this hitting somebody? People say the chances are slim to nill, and just recently a significant piece of equipment came down and I didn't here about anyone getting hit. But a couple years ago NASA printed an article that the odds of someone being hit by the falling Iridium debris were about 1 in 250. By my count, this is the third potentially hazardous satellite entry in as many years, leading me to believe that eventually, someone will be hit.
HETE coming down, Bass going up.
All your Bass are belong to us!
Mod me up, baby!
The HETE-1 was supposed to look for gamma ray bursts. If you haven't heard about these events, they are believed to emanate from explosions so powerful that they produce more energy in a matter of seconds than the sun will emit in its entire 10 billion years of life.
The cool thing is that astronomers have almost no idea what could be causing these enormous bursts.
Check out http://www.sciam.com/0797issue/0797fishman.html for more information.
Thanks!
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
Does it concern anyone else that a 2-day window is awfully large? That means even the us space command can't really pinpoint where this thing will come down, even though it's our own junk. Kinda makes you wonder how it would go if a meteor, etc got too close...
Sir_Haxalot
stuff |
..it will land in USA, King County, ZIP-code 98052-6399 and create a huge explosion.
how can they give the TIME of the event when they are not even sure about the DAY?
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
It would be interesting to add a webpage containing a list of hardware that is compatible with this SDR out-of-the-box or is planned to be supported.
Guess somebody's getting a little too specific in their "predictions" given their precision. In other news, today's high will be 67.2 degrees (+/-40).
will i be able to use these batteries to power my dirty GNU hippie radio?
-----im billy troll----- im better than you at everything you do.
American style is that 80% functions should work under 80% of conditions. That's why NASA has so high % of failure.
Capitalism is good for 80% industries. Space sector is one of those which require dictate-based management and military discipline.
I wouldn't count numbers five and six. Remember, there'a whole lot of zealots who insist we grew out of two people that were made from dirt. (Oh, think of the inbreeding - wait, maybe that's how we ended up with politicians.)
Anyway, the zealots may be stupid, but it's a different kind of stupid than "The earth goes around the sun?!"
Yet they cant determine how soon that satellite is going to hit which is exponentially sooner.
I was astounded when I read that "nearly 3,000 satellites and spacecraft now in orbit around Earth" in CNN's coverage of the story. I wonder if they are counting space junk? It seems like a huge number. With so many in the sky, it is a wonder there is not knews of this sort every day. There was another uncontrolled decent in January of a Nasa satellite. I liked this quote: "Orbital debris has never been known to injure a human, but legend has it a chunk of Skylab brought an untimely end to an Australian cow."
japan. pictures. humor. me
You know, I actually tried to work out the force of impact of one of the batteries, but then I realized: who actually would give a crap? It's gonna hit, and it's gonna make a really big thud.
I just hope nobody ends up in the way, or it'll turn out to be a big splat.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
With all the space junk in orbit now, I wonder if the reason we have not be been contacted by aliens isn't because we are the bad neighbors in the milkyway. We are like the people on the street with uncut grass and old broken down crap strewn all around our yard. Nobody wants to come over and say hello because they assume the residents are low lifes. If we do get a visit, it may be the head of the galaxy association telling us to take down the tacky mood decorations and clean the junk out of our space.
japan. pictures. humor. me
Let me get this straight, on March 16, 2880, we will get hit by an asteroid. But they can only manage to place this in the next 4 or 5 days?
I guess physics isn't an exact science.
it will be the vogons... and they will tell us that the earth will be destroyed to make way for a new hyperspace by way...
If it was at all possible, would NASA consider forcefully bringing the satellite down, eg: over an unpopulated area of an ocean?
Or would this have unfortunate legal issues: international airspace, colateral damage.
i have magic elves in my pants who bake brownies, oh wait no i don't!
... for every slashdotter if a part of this falls on the beer can I have placed outside in my garden. not_cub
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
I wouldn't count numbers five and six. Remember, there'a whole lot of zealots who insist we grew out of two people that were made from dirt.
Actually a few more of the questions are rather flawed.
Question 1: No technology currently exists to measure the core temperature of any planet, including Earth.
Question 2: it's just as valid to say that all the oxygen we breath comes nuclear fusion
Question 4: it sould probably contain "relative to each other". Otherwise they move quite a distance each second. Even then you are asking for a true/false about a theory which is imensly difficult to prove.
In other words, the weight of all 4 batteries is 15 kilos, not the weight of each battery. Still, 3.5 kilos at terminal velocity is nothing to sneeze at - perhaps I should buy a large number of pillows from Yahoo!....
www.eFax.com are spammers
"...there is a good chance that the spacecraft's batteries (weighing 33lbs each) may reach the ground intact."
So...when should I expect it to land on my car?
"You tried your best and failed miserably. The lesson is...never try. Heh!" -Homer
'Stainless steel batteries? ' I think not. More likely that they are plutonium or some other nuclear material, and the reason that no predictions are being made about where they will land is because NASA doesn't want to start a panic. As I understand it they are designed to burn up on re-entry to avoid ground level contamination (that says nothing of atmospheric contamination along the flight path). If they survive all the way to the ground and they are radiological....
Space Nuclear Power Systems
Space Nuclear Power System Accidents
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: How many nuclear devices are there in space?
Link to CNN story.
Where's the Taco Bell Target sitting for this one?
Um, you might want to actually read about the satellite before assuming it uses radiothermal generators.
The great big solar panels in the picture of the satellite might have been a hint that it didn't use nuclear power.
From the HETE pages (describing HETE-2, an exact duplicate of the HETE-1 craft whose launch was unsuccessful):
The HETE-2 power system hardware consists of
You can find more information on the specs of the HETE satellites at http://space.mit.edu/HETE/spacecraft.html .
Also interesting, from a different perspective, is the first part of this Alan Kay essay.
The question now is will Taco Bell put another big bulls-eye out in the general area and offer free tacos to the world if it gets hit again?
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
People keep asking why they don't know when it will hit"
"The re-entry is uncontrolled, and due to potential solar flux variations, time and location predictions will not be reliable until only a few hours before the re-entry event," said Scott Hull"
And contrary to what the original post says, the batteries are not 33 pounds each. That is the total weight of all of them.
Initial analysis indicates that only four small stainless-steel batteries, weighing a total of 15 kilograms (33 pounds) will survive re-entry."
Anyone know the predicted area of landing? I'm sure a general idea can be had based on current orbit...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
there is a good chance that the spacecraft's batteries (weighing 33lbs each) may reach the ground intact
If I'm lucky I won't have to buy that extra laptop battery...
Well, there's our tax dollars at work. Can I get a nice big OOPS??
"True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing"
With all of that orbiting space junk out there, why not salvage it? It seems to me an awful waste to just burn it up in the atmosphere, especially when the average bird is on the order of US$150M.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
I had a great time reading those articles, thanks for posting them here!
Here a link to the text of the Bavarian state-owned news channel that reports mysterious lightning effects yesterday evening in Southern Bavaria around Munich, Germany:
http://www.br-online.de/news/aktuell/
(Look for "Mysteriöse Lichterscheinungen über Südbayern - Weltraummüll?")
And for convenience the Babelfish translation (since the original is not linkable):
"Mysterious lightning effects over Southern Bavaria - Space debris?
Munich: In the sky over South Bavaria it gave several fire balls and optical phenomena yesterday evening. Hundreds anxious humans addressed themselves to the police. Particularly in the region "Bayerischer Wald" and Garmisch as well as in Munich long lightning effects were to be seen around 22:30 for several seconds. Pilots of airliners and military jets announced similar observations over radio. There are no reports about injuries or damages. The space authority NASA had announced that on weekend space garbage over Central Europe could fall. Yesterday it could not yet acknowledge a connection with these optical phenomena however."
I am always interested by NASA's 'scientific' determination of falling objects... they designate the time to the hour, indeed to the minute, then add, +/- 2 days...? Why don't they instead tell us the average ground speed of the Brown-crested Swallow?
Anyone notice the update to the annoucement. Looks like it re-entered above China. As if our relationship with them isn't shaky enough.....here's a satalite for ya!
"Sexy Man" is not a moderation option. -- arose
We are like the people on the street with uncut grass and old broken down crap strewn all around our yard. Nobody wants to come over and say hello because they assume the residents are low lifes. If we do get a visit, it may be the head of the galaxy association telling us to take down the tacky mood decorations and clean the junk out of our space.
Or not. Judging from my experience when I leave old junked cars and major appliances in my front yard, it's a great way to make new friends and the encounter would go more like this:
Interstellar pickup truck with interstellar Confederate flag comes up to the edge of our debris field. Occupant gets out, picks his way gingerly down to the surface, knocks on International Space Agency's door.
"Hi there. I wuz just drivin' by, and I was wundrin, is y'all still usin' that there Iridium system you'se've got still orbitin' yer planet? I got sompin' like it at home and I need some parts. Kin I take it off'n yer hands fer a coupla cases of beer? Thank-ye kindly."
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Here's why I'm making a point of insulting you. Nuclear power of all kinds is backed by a lobby of smug, short-sighted techno-fetishists who just love it in when some hippie does the usual misinformed kneejerk antinuke rant. This allows them to portray all their opponents as such, and avoid the serious issues nuclear technology raise. You just scored one for their side!
All you had to do was make a quick search on Google, which would have led you straight to the specs for the spacecraft in question. Which would have told you that the HETE is powered by a combo of solar cells and nicads.
(Of course, nicads are also an environmental problem, but at least the ones on HETE aren't going into a landfill. Good environmentalist that you are, I hope you take your used nicads to a toxic waste depot. Or is pollution always somebody else's fault?)
Next time you feel inclined to speak up for The Cause, make sure you're actually serving The Cause, and not your own pathetic ego.