UARS Satellite - why does it have to fall?

Here's something I don't get. Why are our defense forces allowing this multi-ton glob of metal to fall to earth, with a possibility of causing damage to life in property?

Don't we maintain an arsenal of satellite-killing missiles and technologies? Why not simply blast it out of space or at least break it up so most of it burns up during reentry?

To answer your question yes we do own this technology and it has been used before. But I like to think that if they shoot it down they wont get the story they want when it hits something of great importance.

You know that it carries data that has to be recovered right?

The problem isnt the entire mass of it surviving reentry and hitting somebody.
The problem is that there are, according to NASA, 23 pieces of it solid enough to survive reentry.

Originally posted by TXRabbit
Why not simply blast it out of space or at least break it up so most of it burns up during reentry?

This wont help.
A missile hit would break it up, but the 23 pieces will still then fall to earth surviving the reentry. Most of it is already going to burn up during reentry.

I hate to say, we entered the solar maximum this year. The flares might've brought the whole system down..

Any weapon we have is not going to disintigrate the satellite. All it wil do is break it into many pieces which then have their own orbits and decay schedules. So instead of one rain of pieces you get many and it will be spread over a much larger area. Our anti-satellite weapons are deisgned to disable the operation of a target satellite --- not vaporise it.

reply to post by FraternitasSaturni


I did not know that. Thanks for the info

Originally posted by FraternitasSaturni
You know that it carries data that has to be recovered right?

Wrong. It's dead, it has no power to it. It's a piece of space junk soon to be earth junk.

reply to post by TXRabbit


As Phage once so eloquently put it:

What happens when you hit something with a missile? Do you think it turns into fluffy bunnies?

Exactly how much difference do you think there is between blowing the thing up and letting it burn up in the atmosphere? We're still left with the same thing... a bunch of debris.

And we can't leave it up there. As space junk, UARS would pose a greater threat to astronauts aboard the ISS than it does by being allowed to fall.

Letting it fall intact is the safest thing we can do with it.

I think its been covered pretty well so far, but essentially because gravity, and blowing it up would cause debris.

one of my favourite anime series is called planetes or 'planets' if you translate it, mainly due to the realism, and space is involved, basically the cast are debris haulers trying to clear up LEO while groups and governments plot to ruin space forever, all while a new ship is being built on the moon to reach jupiter using HE3 (seriously its an amazing series go watch.)

moral of the story, don't screw up space for the next guy, and what goes up will come down even if down is relatively the suns gravitational field.

reply to post by Heartisblack


I started a thread earlier about the ROSAT re-entering next month, you could be right...

"Solar activity causes the atmosphere to expand upwards, causing more braking on space objects. The reason UARS is coming back sooner than expected is a sudden increase in solar activity. Indeed, we expect to see a higher rate of re-entries as we approach the solar maximum in 2013,"

Source[ed itby]edit on 23-9-2011 by Bex33 because: Link went wrong