Look, up in the sky. Is it a bird? A plane? No, it’s a piece of space junk the size of a school bus — headed toward Earth. This week.
Got your attention, didn’t we?
A 12,500-pound, 35-foot-long NASA satellite called the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite or UARS (pronounced YOU-arz) will be the biggest piece of space junk to fall to Earth in nearly 30 years. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) expects that it will partially burn up as it reenters the Earth’s atmosphere. But about 26 pieces will land on Earth in a 500-mile-long line. The biggest piece will weigh about 300 pounds.
Where the pieces will land is hard to say. But since the Earth is mostly covered by water, chances are good that they will land in an ocean between Thursday and Saturday.
So what are the odds of being hit by falling debris? Pretty small. NASA says there’s only about one chance in 3,200 that anyone will be hit. Still, if you go around wearing your bicycle helmet for the next few days, we wouldn’t blame you.
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