7-ton NASA satellite set to fall

Originally posted by neobludragon
ELEnin stands for Extinction Level Event Nibiru. Course the only way you'd know that is if you actaully read the ELEnin threads instead of ignoring them and thinking "oh its just another comet that will do nothing"

Errr no actually. I wonder who was the bright spark who first said 'hey this sounds as if it could stand for.....' Then it goes round and round the net till people are parroting it as fact. It's a guess/interpretation/theory but you don't seem to understand the difference. Prove to me that the name was chosen specifically by tptb to have that meaning or maybe just a black joke on mankind. Prove it. You can't. If we are all still here after Elenin's passing we will be revisiting you and your ilk and maybe allowing ourselves a little chuckle.....

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
Someone who really knows the level of danger a piece of this represents, please explain this quote from the article for me:

"If there is something you think may be a piece of UARS, do not touch it," NASA said. "Contact a local law-enforcement official for assistance."

Is there a real and legitimate reason that ought to concern people (Or stop everyone from souvenir hunting)? For very obvious reasons, the thought of keeping something from the Shuttle break-up would never cross my mind, but if this comes down over the United States, why wouldn't I want to carefully pack a piece of this away as the ultimate souvenir? This kind of warning first strikes me as the Gov't simply wanting control of their debris for the sake of control...or is there something about this satellite or it's power system we ought to know?

edit on 7-9-2011 by Wrabbit2000 because: (no reason given)

I think I can explain this one.

This material has been in space for quite some time, it has been exposed to high levels of cosmic radiation as well as extreme heat and cold. They may have gone through actual submicroscopic changes that can give us clues as to how to make future spacecraft safer for the fragile organisms (us) traveling in them.

I forgot all about the hydrazine fuel cells, that is also a great danger, thanks to other posters.

Originally posted by InnerPeace2012
Wow, this has never happened before...this must be the end of the world..

I just hope it doesn't lend on someone...

Peace

edit on 7-9-2011 by InnerPeace2012 because: (no reason given)

Actually, it has, remember SpaceLab. If you don't, then I have shown my age. You could always google it.

Peace

I'm new, so I don't have thread posting abilities.So I'm just gonna add this here. I have been a Space science fan for many years. As a result I have used the NASA site alot for viewing missions and info in generel . (All though a sive.) I just noticed the "Live ISS feed' is no longer availiable. Now why would they stop that feed? Any one know when this happened? Timing is everything. Just another thing to ponder in these times of uncertanty.

Update #1
Mon, 12 Sep 2011 01:29:31 PM GMT

As of Sept. 12, 2011, the orbit of UARS was 145 mi by 165 mi (235 km by 265 km). Re-entry is expected during the last week of September.


www.nasa.gov...

Funny how all these things are gonna happen in Sept. and Oct. Elenin(a one time event,not an orbitol event), sattlelite crashes, that asteroid between us and the moon, the ISS possible evac. Add the NASA warning to there "family" a few months ago, and the Hoppi prophecies Apparently were gonna have a few "Blue stars" falling.As well as the Myan angle,you've got a heck of a lot of writing on the wall. Lot of coincedence there. It's no wounder this story won't go away. Because there's so many "Oh , and buy the way" angles to it.
All that being said, I'm looking forward to the Nov. 5th date. At least I think there will be something we can all see as we pass through the tail of Elenin. There should be some spectacular meteor showers as it looks like Elenin is on or very close to the Orbitol plane of the majority of planets in our Solar System. That is as long as it didn't break up to go into indavidual gravity breaking orbits around the sun, to arrive in multiple geosync orbits around Earth . Blink blink. Gotta love the open endedness of it all.

Not too long to wait.

Update #2
Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:54:30 PM GMT

As of Sept. 15, 2011, the orbit of UARS was 143 mi by 158 mi (230 km by 255 km). Re-entry is expected Sept. 24, plus or minus a day.

www.nasa.gov...

Originally posted by NervousNJerky
Funny how all these things are gonna happen in Sept. and Oct. Elenin(a one time event,not an orbitol event), sattlelite crashes, that asteroid between us and the moon,

2005 YU55 doesn't make perigee until November.

the ISS possible evac.

Also not till November.

Add the NASA warning to there "family" a few months ago,

How dare they suggest people prepare for natural disasters according to the disasters common to the centers' respective areas? Good grief, my own employer did something along those lines at the start of hurricane season this year too, they must be in on it.

and the Hoppi prophecies

You mean when the Salyuts each fell? You mean when Skylab fell? You mean when Mir fell? How many times does it have to be "fulfilled?"

All that being said, I'm looking forward to the Nov. 5th date. At least I think there will be something we can all see as we pass through the tail of Elenin.

We're not going to pass through Elenin's tail. It will be 4.7 million kilometers above the ecliptic plane as it crosses our orbit on its way out.

There should be some spectacular meteor showers as it looks like Elenin is on or very close to the Orbitol plane of the majority of planets in our Solar System.

Then you haven't analyzed the orbital characteristics well enough, because it's going to be far above the ecliptic plane at the time it crosses our orbit.

That is as long as it didn't break up

Yeah, it already did that too.
members.westnet.com.au...

to go into indavidual gravity breaking orbits around the sun, to arrive in multiple geosync orbits around Earth .

I'm sorry, but that makes no sense whatsoever. That is not even close to how things work in reality. The individual pieces of elenin retain the momentum of the original comet, they continue following the original orbit of the comet. Over time they spead out along the orbit, but they continue on that general orbit nonetheless which keeps them far away from earth.

You're right ngchunter, I also overlooked the Solar winds effect on the tail itself. I stand corrected, and appoligize for posting this, It's a dead end.

reply to post by gamesmaster63


The satellite lost it's function over 6 years ago. That's what happens to dead debris, it eventually loses the orbital battle from gravity. Skylab was much more massive, it lost it's battle quicker.

If the 'dubbed' Apollo 18 went to push Skylab up a bit higher and faster instead of doing that stupid feel-good rendezvous with a Soyuz, it may still be there today as part of the ISS. But PR is the problem for NASA mission specialists, PR doesn't find sustainable matters interesting or sexy. PR is also the main culprit that the Challenger was launched with that massive O-ring leak and yet, no Shuttle was ever launched below freezing, because all of those little kids were there to watch their teacher go up into space and they would not have one single delay of that launch anymore, ( I believe there were three previous launch delays).

Both Space Shuttle disasters were simple human error, arrogance, and or complacency. People use that to mar the program history when it wasn't the shuttle itself, it was directly the result of the guy that said GO, dispute all of the clamoring that it was ill advised.

Originally posted by RedGolem
The source article said that it was put into a disposal orbit. I was under the impression that when a satellite is decommissioned it was suppose to have its thrusters activated and pushed out of orbit. Thus another satellite could then be placed into the spot that the decommissioned one had. So my question is why was this one put in a disposal orbit?

Red, you are correct in assuming that when a spacecraft is put into a disposal orbit, that it gets pushed out farther, but that is when you are dealing with geosynchronous satellites. (They are 37,000 km out in space). The UARS was at about 350Km's and with most LEO satellites, their disposal orbit is a point where they can burn fuel and put in an orbit low enough to let the earth's gravity pull it in, hence, LEO satellites re-entering the atmosphere.

Someday, Ill write up an article to explain the difference of Low Earth Orbits (LEO), Medium Earth Orbits (MEO) and Geosynchronous Orbits (GEO). As I am an orbital dynamics engineer for a leading civilian satellite company.

Good question, Red!

Originally posted by new_here

Originally posted by WhoDat09
Wow!! That's alot of stuff coming down, hopefully it won't hurt anyone. It is interesting that it is falling at the end of September when we have all this Elenin nonsense going on!

Yes, add that to the Elenin synchronicity list. I've lost count.

Otherwise, all of the solar M & X class flares of late.... There's always mention of 'can interfere with satellites.' So, just wondering if this one got scrambled, and 'zapped' out of orbit from a direct hit due to a hole in the ozone perhaps. Is that even possible? It said 'upper atmosphere.' Just throwing it out there for consideration.

The M&X class flares with the potential to "interfere" with satellites is just that, a potential. With Solar flares, satellites are not affected by the solar winds as much as you think, but really is minimal. The real danger to spacecraft is what we in the industry call a "charged particle event", that being basically, an EMP pulse in space that can effect the satellite's electronics. Even if a solar event "zapped" the UARS, we wouldn't see an immediate orbital disturbance, what we would see immediately is the spacecraft's electronics failing or a disruption of the electronics. If they were to leave it at its operational orbit (350Kms) and they just turned it off, it would take something on the order of 50 years or more for its orbit to decay and re-enter the atmosphere.

Its speeding up. Its gonna happen sooner rather than later

Update #3
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:12:40 PM GMT

As of Sept. 16, 2011, the orbit of UARS was 140 mi by 155 mi (225 km by 250 km). Re-entry is expected Sept. 23, plus or minus a day. The re-entry of UARS is advancing because of a sharp increase in solar activity since the beginning of this week.

www.nasa.gov...

reply to post by bentai22

As I am an orbital dynamics engineer for a leading civilian satellite company.

Now that's pretty cool, as orbital dynamics is an interest of mine, just an interest mind you, I don't do the math. Here is an interesting orbit that someone with some software put into a video, it is an earth trojan moon.

And another one.

Wonder if the planned visit to Denver with no set agenda will be pushed ahead??

Originally posted by whatnext21
Wonder if the planned visit to Denver with no set agenda will be pushed ahead??

you do realise elenin is no longer with us?

Are people really trying to equate this to Elenin/Nibiru somehow? Really?

This whole thing reminds me of the episode of Big O that I'm actually watching right now. A piece of an old satellite falls out of orbit and everyone starts believing it was an angel that came down from heaven.Then when the main body of the satellite falls and threatens the city everyone forms a bit festival to celebrate it's arrival instead of getting the heck out.

So I guess we should just wait for a giant mech to save us all from the falling satellite.

Update #4
Sun, 18 Sep 2011 05:12:09 PM GMT

As of Sept. 18, 2011, the orbit of UARS was 133 mi by 149 mi (215 km by 240 km). Re-entry is expected Sept. 23, plus or minus a day.

www.nasa.gov...

reply to post by JohnySeagull

Did say anything about Elenin, that would be for a different post. What I implied was that the visit was originally scheduled for Sept 26 and the satellite was originally forecast to fall last week of Sept or 1st week of Oct. in a section of the world within the latitudes already provided. BTW i checked the location of the satellite. For the move ahead of schedule date of Sept 26 it crosses from the east coast down across the great lakes and heads for Texas, funny how on the 23rd it goes down the eastern seaboard away from land and several miles into the Atlantic. Mind you this is based on my plotted location and time.