UPDATE... put your umbrellas away
Safe From NASA Satellite Falling: UARS Fell Over Pacific Ocean
By David magee | September 24, 2011 8:39 AM EDT
Those around the world afraid that
NASA's falling UARS satellite might come crashing down upon them can rest easy.
NASA said the satellite initially penetrated the Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. Most of it is believed to have burned up.
NASA has not confirmed where it landed, but the agency has said re-entry occurred during a two-hour period.
The agency says the 35-foot satellite fell sometime between 11:23 p.m. EDT and 1:09 a.m. EDT. NASA said the precise time or location isn't known yet, but there have been no reports on land as of Saturday morning of impact to people or property.
The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is the biggest NASA spacecraft to make an uncontrolled crash into Earth since 1979.
But there never was a big concern that NASA's falling satellite would hit a person. The odds were "very modest," according to one expert.
"You're way more likely to be hit by lightning" than by the satellite, Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. told The Wall Street Journal.