Falling Satellite Update: UARS Can Still Hit U.S. and You
Only people living near the North or the South Pole are safe from being hit by falling satellite that is expected to hit Earth sometime late Friday or early Saturday, according to NASA’s latest estimates on the crash site.
The scientists said that the debris can fall anywhere between 57th degree North and 57th degree South, though the agency believes most of the space junk will land in the ocean.
NASA said Friday that there is still a chance that debris from the satellite can hit the United States despite saying earlier that North America was in the clear.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
The chances of someone getting hit by pieces of the satellite is 1-in-3,200, according to NASA.
But John Matson of the Scientific American disputed that figure, concluding that we are about 14,000 times more likely to be struck dead by a lightning than by a piece of the UARS (Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite).
Matson also claimed that the odds of getting hit that NASA has presented are wrong. In actuality, the odds are about 1 in 21 trillion, since the risk is spread across almost all of Earth’s 6.7 billion inhabitants, he said.
A possibility still exists, though, and the public if following the news on the falling satellite with interest.
A man who’s an Emergency Management Director in Alabama told Fox News affiliate WBRC that he will remain cautious.
“It could happen. Remember when Skylab did the same thing? We were worried about the same thing,” he said.
Meanwhile, retired University of Alabama astronomy professor Thomas Wdowiak, who worked on the Mars Rover program through 2003 and 2004, confirmed with the station that chances of getting hit are low.
“As I understand it, they calculate it would be one in 3,200. But if you take 6 to 7 billion people, the chances of you getting hit goes up into the trillions,” Wdowiak told WBRC.
Though the odds of being hit by debris are low, it’s not entirely impossible.
In 1997, Lottie Williams of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was hit by a piece of a space rocket. Williams got tapped on a shoulder by a “small piece of burnt mesh,” which is believed to be a piece of the Delta II rocket, she said in an interview with NPR.
Williams is reportedly the only person to have ever been hit by space debris.
According to NASA’s reports, “Since the beginning of the Space Age in the late-1950s, there have been no confirmed reports of an injury resulting from re-entering space objects. Nor is there a record of significant property damage resulting from a satellite re-entry.”
