New NASA Satellite Update: UARS ‘Space Junk’ Continues Towards Crash on Earth

In the latest update from NASA regarding the re-entry of the UARS satellite, commonly referred to in the media as the ‘Space Junk’ crashing back to Earth this week, the agency indicated that North America will not be hit by the falling satellite debris.

In the statement issued at 9:30 p.m. Eastern last night, NASA gave the position of the satellite as 110 mi by 115 mi (175 km by 185 km), with it expected to enter the atmosphere during the afternoon or early evening of Sept. 23, Eastern Daylight Time.

The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) was launched in 1991 from the Space Shuttle. It was the first multi-instrumented satellite to observe numerous chemical constituents of the atmosphere with a goal of better understanding atmospheric photochemistry and transport, according to NASA.

The next status update from NASA is expected at about 12-hours before re-entry. Other updates will continue to come out at the 6-hour and then at 2-hour prior to crashing back to Earth.

As we reported earlier, real time tracking is available at www.n2yo.com, but be warned that the site has been down due to the volume of requests recently. Realtime tracking of the International Space Station (ISS) and other orbiting satellites is also available from NASA at: http://science.nasa.gov/realtime-tracking/.