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)."

Comments

Ebay...

[pfb]

/me wonders whether items will appear on ebay before they even land...

reminds me of skylab

[serps]

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.

Precision, precision.

[ChiPHeaD23]

'Current predictions put re-entry at 4:41 EDT Sunday April 7 (+/- two days)'

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).

Too much space junk

[somaroma]

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.