Another dead, drifting satellite will fall to Earth in November, following the U.S. satellite that showered pieces over the Pacific Ocean Saturday, experts say.
Officials at the say a decommissioned X-ray space observatory should enter the atmosphere sometime in early November, but exactly when and where debris from the satellite will land cannot be determined yet, SPACE.com reported.
The 2.4-ton ROSAT satellite is in an orbit that swings between 53 degree of latitude north and south, so any debris surviving its re-entry could land anywhere in a huge area of the , officials said.
The dead satellite is being tracked, but any prediction about the exact time and place of its fall will remain uncertain until roughly 2 hours before it hits Earth, they said.
"It is not possible to accurately predict ROSAT's re-entry," Heiner Klinkrad, head of the Space Debris Office at , said. "The uncertainty will decrease as the moment of re-entry approaches."
However, he said, it would be possible to rule out certain geographical regions from the potential impact area about a day in advance.
Officials at the say a decommissioned X-ray space observatory should enter the atmosphere sometime in early November, but exactly when and where debris from the satellite will land cannot be determined yet, SPACE.com reported.
The 2.4-ton ROSAT satellite is in an orbit that swings between 53 degree of latitude north and south, so any debris surviving its re-entry could land anywhere in a huge area of the , officials said.
The dead satellite is being tracked, but any prediction about the exact time and place of its fall will remain uncertain until roughly 2 hours before it hits Earth, they said.
"It is not possible to accurately predict ROSAT's re-entry," Heiner Klinkrad, head of the Space Debris Office at , said. "The uncertainty will decrease as the moment of re-entry approaches."
However, he said, it would be possible to rule out certain geographical regions from the potential impact area about a day in advance.