NASA’s massive defunct satellite hit Earth Saturday, followed by rampant – and perhaps misguided – speculation that it crashed near a city in Alberta.
NASA does not know where the six-ton piece of space junk landed, but excited Twitter users are pushing for Okotoks, immediately south of Calgary.
But Dr. Phil Langill, director of the University of Calgary's Rothney Astrophysical Observatory 30 kilometres southwest of Calgary, said he hasn't heard anything about a debris field in the region.
His telescopes would have "no scientific reason to track" the falling satellite since it would only be "something cool to see in the sky."
He doubts anything would have fallen in this area.
"It would be a bit of a miracle," he said.
Twitter users are backing up their claims with a six and a half minute video circulating the Internet. A glittery streak in the sky can be seen, and excited voices heard, on the video, seemingly shot with an iPhone. While the YouTube posting says the pictures are from Okotoks, the amateur videographer who was out for a walk is nowhere near the Canadian city.
“I’m [in] Oklahoma City, looking southeast,” he says on the video. “I just wish people could see this, because this is crazy.”
He states that the date is September 22. Two U.S. government agencies said the 35-foot satellite fell sometime between 11:23 p.m. EDT Friday, September 23, and 1:09 a.m. EDT Saturday, September 24, but with no precise time or location.
RCMP Sgt. Patrick Webb says the video is likely a hoax, adding police have heard nothing about falling debris in the area.
Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says the spacecraft entered the atmosphere around 12:15 a.m. eastern time over the coast of Washington state.
He says much of the debris likely fell over the Pacific Ocean, with some making it to Canada over northern Alberta and perhaps as far as the Hudson Bay.
Mr. McDowell said he'd be surprised if anyone was hurt by the debris because it appears to have fallen in such remote areas.
“I do think people saw lights in the sky and fireballs and may well be bits of UARS falling down,” he said.
The bus-sized satellite first penetrated Earth's atmosphere somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, according to NASA and the U.S. Air Force's Joint Space Operations Center. But that doesn't necessarily mean it all fell into the sea.
NASA spokesman Steve Cole said that was possible Alberta was hit because the last track for the satellite included Canada, starting north of Seattle and then in a large arc north then south. From there, the track continued through the Atlantic south toward Africa, but it was unlikely the satellite got that far if it started falling over the Pacific.
Mr. Cole said NASA was hoping for more details from the Air Force, which was responsible for tracking debris.
NASA's earlier calculations had predicted that the 20-year-old former climate research satellite would fall over an 800-kilometre swath and could include land.
Because the plummet began over the ocean and given the lack of any reports of people being hit, that “gives us a good feeling that no one was hurt,” but officials didn't know for certain, Mr. Cole told The Associated Press.
Given where the satellite may have fallen, officials may never quite know precisely.
“Most space debris is in the ocean. It'll be hard to confirm,” Mr. Cole said.
Some 26 pieces of the satellite representing 1,200 pounds of heavy metal had been expected to rain down somewhere. The biggest surviving chunk should be no more than 135 kilograms.
The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite is the biggest NASA spacecraft to crash back to Earth, uncontrolled, since the post-Apollo 75-ton Skylab space station and the more than 10-ton Pegasus 2 satellite, both in 1979.
Russia's 135-ton Mir space station slammed through the atmosphere in 2001, but it was a controlled dive into the Pacific.
Before UARS fell, no one had ever been hit by falling space junk and NASA expected that not to change.
NASA put the chances that somebody somewhere on Earth would get hurt at 1-in-3,200. But any one person's odds of being struck were estimated at 1-in-22 trillion, given there are seven billion people on the planet.
The satellite ran out of fuel and died in 2005. UARS was built and launched before NASA and other nations started new programs that prevent this type of uncontrolled crashes of satellite.
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