Look Out Above

2011 has certainly been anything but uneventful. We've had record snowfall and tornados. We've had hurricanes and floods. We've had earthquakes and wildfires. Now, the sky is falling:

NASA space junk experts have refined the forecast for the anticipated death plunge of a giant satellite, with the U.S. space agency now predicting the 6 1/2-ton climate probe will plummet to Earth around Sept. 23, a day earlier than previously reported.

The defunct bus-size spacecraft is NASA's Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS), which launched in 1991 and was shut down in 2005 after completing its mission. The satellite was expected to fall to Earth sometime this year, with experts initially pegging a weeks-long window between late September and early October, then narrowing it to the last week of this month.

While NASA expects much of it to disintegrate upon re-entry, as many as 26 large pieces are expected to survive and make impact with the surface of the planet. With any luck, the satellite formerly known as UARS will fall into the ocean. However, there is a 1-in-3200 chance of debris hitting a person on the ground. And although experts assure us that these are "extremely remote" odds, it would be nice if there were just a few more zeros at the end of that 3200 number. As a point of fact however, when Skylab fell in 1979, the odds of it hitting anyone was 1-in-152. NASA and JSOC (Joint Space Operations Center) won't know for sure where until just 2 hours before reentry.

So while you are going about your week, worrying about the economy, the Middle East, or the performance of your favorite college football team, you might want to look out above.