IS THE SKY FALLING?

By Dan Miller
February 1, 2008

You know, I’m beginning to think Chicken Little may have been ahead of his time.

You’ve probably heard about a 7,000 pound science satellite that's falling from the sky this week.
By the time you're reading this, it will likely have already dropped and disintegrated.
Most of the pieces will burn up as they enter the atmosphere, but any parts that don’t disintegrate could come down anywhere along a belt stretching from Orlando, Florida to Brisbane, Australia.
That would include such high population spots as Miami, Mexico City and Bangkok.

While reading about that falling satellite, I saw a story about another one… a large U.S. spy satellite… that’ll be falling to Earth late this month or early March.
It’s fully expected that a few pieces of this one will survive reentry and hit the ground, possibly in North America.

Since it’s a spy satellite, there’s even mild concern that “sensitive” information could come down with satellite parts.

It all got me thinking…. just how many objects are there circling our planet that will, eventually, have to come down.... "space junk" as they call it?

Quick visits to several space-related websites provided some answers.
As of 2000, there were roughly 8,927 manmade objects circling overhead.
About 2,671 of those objects were actual satellites.
And those are just the big things.

When you factor in nuts and bolts and gloves and other little things floating around, there are estimated to be 110,000 objects larger than 1 centimeter.
And some estimates are much, much higher than that.

Look at the three images next to this essay, taken from one of NASA's websites.
The first illustrates the concentration of objects orbiting within 2,000 km of the earth's surface.

The second is an illustration of objects orbiting around a 35,785 km altitude.

The third image illustrates those same orbiting objects from a vantage point directly above the north pole.

You know, it's slightly reminiscent of the rings around Saturn.
Hmmmm.. maybe this could provide elusive answers about the origin of those Saturn rings.
What if -- eons ago -- a civilization of Saturnians overloaded their planet with so much space debris that it resulted in the mysterious rings?
And then, what if so much debris started falling to the surface of Saturn that it ultimately wiped out the Saturnians?

Naaaaaa
It's time for me to rest.
But perhaps I'll wear a football helmet outside tomorrow.

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