Friday, September 23, 2011

Fall In More Ways Than One

Not only is today the first day of fall 2011 (0904 UTC) it also turns out that a great big thing the size of a school bus is going to fall out of the sky:
On Friday (Sept. 23), a dead NASA satellite the size of a school bus is expected to enter the atmosphere, break into pieces and rain down upon Earth. Though space agency officials don’t yet know where the chunks (some weighing as much as 300 pounds) will hit and haven’t narrowed down exactly where, they say the chances of the falling space debris striking a person are extremely small.
According to the story  the chunks won’t be falling on North America so we North Americans probably don't need to carry an umbrella today.:
According to Mark Matney, a scientist in the Orbital Debris Program Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the odds that any of the 7 billion people on Earth will be struck by a piece of the soon-to-fall satellite is 1 in 3,200. “The odds that you will be hit … are 1 in several trillion,” Matney said. “So, quite low for any particular person.”
While, in addition to the first day of fall and the sky falling  we are also getting a pretty good fall out of the stock market.

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