Satellite Ends Fall, Likely in the Pacific

(The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, which fell to Earth late Friday or early Staurday, as it deployed from the space shuttle in 1991.)

A dead NASA satellite, intently tracked by people around the world over the last couple of days, finally fell back to Earth - and it may turn out that no one will ever know when and where it fell.

One its final orbital trajectory, the six-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite passed to the south of Australia and then headed to the northeast across the Pacific toward Vancouver, British Columbia. The air Force's Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, which tracks space debris, predicted re-entry at 12:16 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday over the northeastern pacific.

While NASA did receive reports of people who saw lights in the sky that they thought were pieces of the disintegrating satellite, none of them occurred at a time and place where the satellite would have been passing by, and people looking at the correct time and place did not see anything.

Mr. Cole said NASA was awaiting more details form the Joint Space Operations Center. There were no reports of damage of injuries.

The satellite had been expected to re-enter Friday afternoon, but its rate of fall slowed.

At least 26 pieces, the largest at 330 pounds, had been expected to survive the plunge and land along a path 500 miles long.

NASA had forecast a 1-in-3,200 risk that debris from the satellite could injure someone.

There are no known instance of anyone being injured by falling space debris (though in 1997, a woman in Oklahoma was brushed by a piece of mesh from a Delta 2 rocket booster that did her no harm). When the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry in 2003, the seven astronauts aboard died, but no one on the ground was hurt as 42.5 tons of debris showered down from West Texas to southwest Louisiana.

The UARS satellite was launched in 1991 by the space shuttle Discovery and was decommissioned in 2005, when it was placed into a lower orbit so it would not cause any problem for the International Space Station.

Tags: "Most of these things come down in the water, that's why we never see them".