![]() This is the largest NASA satellite to re-enter in about 30 years, but at six tons, it’s only a fraction of the size of the 75-ton Skylab that fell back to Earth in 1979. Objects this size re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere about once a year, according to NASA. And even if pieces strike dry land, there’s very little risk any will hit people. The magnitude of the force is the same on each, consistent with Newton’s third law. 2: Gravitational attraction is along a line joining the centers of mass of these two bodies. He said NASA has identified 26 pieces, ranging from tens of pounds to a few hundred pounds, that could make it.īecause water covers about 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, NASA believes most, if not all the debris that survives will land in an ocean or sea. The force is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. “There are some pieces that are made of stainless steel and titanium and beryllium that have very high melting temperatures, and those pieces will survive,” Matney said. The last two equations, together with the equations modelling the atmospheric density, can be iterated from the starting satellite altitude and time. Imagine a body with velocity (v) is falling freely from a height (h) for time (t) seconds because of gravity (g). But about half a ton of material is likely to make it through. Freefall as the term says, is a body falling freely because of the gravitational pull of our earth. NASA says most of the six-ton spacecraft is made of aluminum, which has a relatively low melting temperature and will burn up on re-entry. On top of that, he said, “part of the problem is the spacecraft is tumbling in unpredictable ways and it is very difficult to very precisely pinpoint where it’s coming down even right before the re-entry.” ![]() ![]() time, NASA says there is no way to know where it will fall.īecause the satellite travels thousands of miles in a matter of minutes, even minutes before re-entry, it will be impossible to pinpoint an exact location, Mark Matney of NASA’s Orbital Debris team said Wednesday. A satellite whose orbit is degrading is likely to crash back to Earth on Friday, and 26 pieces have a good chance of surviving the heat of re-entry, NASA said.ĭespite being pretty sure that the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, will re-enter the atmosphere sometime Friday afternoon, U.S. Calculate the orbital velocity of the earth so that the satellite revolves around the earth if the radius of earth R 6.5 × 10 6 m, the mass of earth M 5.9722×10 24 kg and Gravitational constant G 6.
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