Predicting When Space Junk Will Come Home To Earth

Following up on recent news of a NASA satellite falling from the sky and a German satellite that did the same, new submitter blais writes "NPR has an interesting interview about space junk falling back to Earth — and the odds of it possibly hitting someone. I thought it might be of interest to the other space nerds out there. Quoting: '... it's very difficult to know exactly when a satellite's going to come down. The Earth's atmosphere is hard to model. It's very thin up there, 100 miles or more up, but it exists. And sometimes it's a little bit denser, sometimes not, and the satellite might be tumbling, and so it makes it very difficult to know exactly when it's ... going to come down."

Re:Zat's not my department

[Spy Handler]

WVB: "it vill go up like a cannonball, und come down like a... cannonball, vid a parachute to spare ze life of the speceeman inside"

LBJ: "Spaceman?"

WVB: "Spe-ci-men!"

LBJ: "Well what kind of a spe-ci-men?"

WVB: "A tough one. Responsive to orders... I had in mind a jimp."

LBJ: "A Jimp? What in the hell is a jimp??"

WVB: "Jimp... a jimpanzee, senator!"