NASA: Satellite came down harmlessly over South Pacific

Sep 28, 2011, 14:09 GMT

Washington - The decommissioned satellite that reentered the atmosphere and fell to Earth last week dropped into the South Pacific, the US space agency NASA said Wednesday.

The 6-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, one of NASA's own spacecraft, came down around 0400 GMT Saturday over 'a broad, remote ocean area in the Southern Hemisphere, far from any major land mass.

NASA was unable to steer the craft and did not immediately know where it had struck, though it was believed to have come down over the Pacific Ocean. Since then, the Joint Space Operations Centre at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California has determined that the stricken weather research satellite reentered the atmosphere in an arc over the South Pacific, NASA said.

NASA said it was 'not aware of any possible debris sightings from this geographic area.'

The research satellite was launched in 1991 to measure the ozone lawyer and the atmosphere and functioned until 2005. The bus-sized satellite was expected to only partially burn up in the atmosphere from the friction and high heat of reentry before breaking into pieced.

NASA's revised projection appears to refute the claims, according to media reports, of a family in the Caucasian republic Georgia that possible satellite debris had hit their back yard on Friday.

Further information is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/uars/index.html