Gaia
30th October 2015, 17:41
On November 13, 2015, astronomers will get the chance to observe an object that will hit earth at 6:20 UTC, around 65 kilometres from the southern tip of Sri Lanka. This little guy is rare even though there are many pieces of space junk in orbit around the earth, none of the artificial objects in distant orbit are known to have made the return trip to Earth.
The object is only 1 to 2 metres in size, and its trajectory shows it is low-density, perhaps hollow. That suggests an artificial object, “a lost piece of space history that’s come back to haunt us”, says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
http://www.nature.com/news/incoming-space-junk-a-scientific-opportunity-1.18642
For those who prefer video:
PAodM3xzBv4
The object is only 1 to 2 metres in size, and its trajectory shows it is low-density, perhaps hollow. That suggests an artificial object, “a lost piece of space history that’s come back to haunt us”, says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
http://www.nature.com/news/incoming-space-junk-a-scientific-opportunity-1.18642
For those who prefer video:
PAodM3xzBv4