http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1707240,00.html

(Washington) — A large U.S. spy satellite has lost power and propulsion and could hit the Earth in late February or March, government officials said Saturday.

The satellite, which no longer be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down, they said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is classified as secret.

"Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation," said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council. "Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly. We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damage this satellite may cause."

He would not comment on whether it is possible for the satellite to be perhaps shot down by a missile. He said it would be inappropriate to discuss any specifics at this time.

A senior government official said that lawmakers and other nations are being kept apprised of the situation.

I hope it ain over the Bahamas. A lot of them are quite visible, their lights are a bit brighter than some stars.

Sometimes they are so close, I wonder if they are doing surveillance on the Bahamas.

After watching Enemy of the State, I am a believer.

I hope it ain over the Bahamas. A lot of them are quite visible, their lights are a bit brighter than some stars.
Sometimes they are so close, I wonder if they are doing surveillance on the Bahamas.


Monitoring the inflitration of potcake dogs into the intrnational community....hehehehe

j/k

They DO keep and eye on the container port in FPO using those sattilites....Lots of sat photos of that container all over the place.

Ya know the US don'treally trust da Chinese. Dey jes want dem to make dem a heap a cheap goods fa Walmart and ting!

I have seen a lot of strange things in the skies over the Bahamas. One night I saw a bright light over the water near Lucaya. I first I said it was a helicopter, but the light stayed stationary for so long more than 1/2 hour, I deleted that theory.

I showed it to someone else, they saw it too and they suggested that maybe it was in-flight fueling going on. I brushed it off but still wonder, why would an aircraft refuel in midair just miles of the coast of Grand Bahama. I know it was in the night, but the airport is right there.

I don't believe in UFO'S.

I have seen a lot of strange things in the skies over the Bahamas. One night I saw a bright light over the water near Lucaya. I first I said it was a helicopter, but the light stayed stationary for so long more than 1/2 hour, I deleted that theory.
I showed it to someone else, they saw it too and they suggested that maybe it was in-flight fueling going on. I brushed it off but still wonder, why would an aircraft refuel in midair just miles of the coast of Grand Bahama. I know it was in the night, but the airport is right there.
I don't believe in UFO'S.


That does sound like in-flight refueling.

Perhaps it is too much of a hassle to land a millitary aircraft at GB International and quicker to just refuel mid-air.

I have seen a lot of strange things in the skies over the Bahamas. One night I saw a bright light over the water near Lucaya. I first I said it was a helicopter, but the light stayed stationary for so long more than 1/2 hour, I deleted that theory.
I showed it to someone else, they saw it too and they suggested that maybe it was in-flight fueling going on. I brushed it off but still wonder, why would an aircraft refuel in midair just miles of the coast of Grand Bahama. I know it was in the night, but the airport is right there.
I don't believe in UFO'S.
you know when I was a small girl in exuma I remember seeing like a little "space orb" with a blinking red light slowly descending on the foliage behind our house...i understand it now...

what we have in our midst wouldnt be tolerated anywhere else...and that is all I will say for now.

That does sound likein-flight refueling.
Perhaps it is too much of a hassle to land a millitary aircraft at GB International and quicker to jsut refuel mid-air.
but why?
was our govt notified of this occurence(time and again, like the "space orbs" n exuma tracking drugs I presume...you just cant do what you want in another man's lear...

but why?
was our govt notified of this occurence(time and again, like the "space orbs" n exuma tracking drugs I presume...you just cant do what you want in another man's lear...

There is a lot our Govenment know nothing about.
A.U.T.E.C prime example, only the United States government knows what goes on there. I flew over many times on Bahamasair from Andros Town to Nassau. The place does not even look like it's in the Bahamas.

As a student of North Andros High, we went there many times to compete against Central Andros in softball games. We were restricted to the baseball field.

It is treated like American Soil.
I have a cousin who is in the U.S Navy, the last time I spoke with him, he told me many times he was very close to home on their submarines.

Sit on the waterfront in Behring Point Andros and look at the size of the ships that frequents the base.

The U.S gat their own thing going on in our backyard.

With the amount of enemies America has, I hope they realize we only guilty by reason of location.

There is a lot our Govenment know nothing about.

The U.S gat their own thing going on in our backyard.
With the amount of enemies America has, I hope they realize we only guilty by reason of location.

LOL!

That does sound like in-flight refueling.
Perhaps it is too much of a hassle to land a millitary aircraft at GB International and quicker to just refuel mid-air.

FPO is only 5000 ft long, a 747 can land

In fact we had one up our butt one day when we came in on a Cessna, not fun, kinda like a n a l sex

FPO is only 5000 ft long, a 747 can land
In fact we had one up our butt one day when we came in on a Cessna, not fun, kinda like a n a l sex


LOL!

No,I meant they probably don't want the hassle of trying to "get permission" from Bahamas air traffic control and the apprpriate government official to land a military aircraft in GBI (or Nassau for that matter.)


"You warn land what? Where? Bey,I 'ein know dred. Lemme call da MP, but he at da fish fry so you gattey hold on."

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1707240,00.html
(Washington) —
"Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation," said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council. "Numerous satellites over the years have come out of orbit and fallen harmlessly. We are looking at potential options to mitigate any possible damage this satellite may cause.".
A senior government official said that lawmakers and other nations are being kept apprised of the situation.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1707541,00.html

If you're the kind inclined to worry, here's a real hand-wringer for you: Sometime as early as February, 7,000 lbs. of flaming metal are going to start raining out of the sky, and nobody can say exactly where on Earth it's going to happen.......the satellite becomes a falling cannonball colliding with the atmosphere at 17,500 mph....
........In 2006, wreckage from a plummeting Russian spy satellite whizzed dangerously close to a Latin American Airbus carrying 270 passengers. That near-miss took place over the Pacific Ocean, which is considered among the safest places in the world to bring down satellites due to its unpopulated vastness. The worst uncontrolled reentry in history occurred in July 1979, when Skylab, America's abandoned, 78-ton space station — which had long since run out of maneuvering fuel — came down earlier than planned, raining debris across the Australian outback.
....That plus the small size of the doomed craft probably means its death will be nothing more than a pleasant sky show for the few people lucky enough to see it. If you're the kind inclined to worry, you might have to pick another problem.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1707240,00.html

Spacecraft Falling! Get Set to Duck?
Monday, Jan. 28, 2008 By JEFFREY KLUGER

If you're the kind inclined to worry, here's a real hand-wringer for you: Sometime as early as February, 7,000 lbs. of flaming metal are going to start raining out of the sky, and nobody can say exactly where on Earth it's going to happen. The upside is, there's almost no rational reason you should give it a second thought.

The approaching fireball of debris comes to us courtesy of an unnamed U.S. spy satellite launched in December 2006, which reached orbit perfectly well, but then suffered a breakdown that caused ground controllers to lose communication with it. "It's not necessarily dead, but it's deaf," John McDowell, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics unhelpfully told The New York Times. A deaf satellite, after all, is almost as bad as a dead satellite, when it comes to telling it to fire its thrusters so that it can stay in orbit, or at least come down in a safe place like the middle of the ocean. Without communications, the satellite becomes a falling cannonball colliding with the atmosphere at 17,500 mph.

That very atmosphere, however, helps ensure that we're in very little danger from being struck by this craft or any other incoming junk. Even billions of years after the formation of the solar system, space is still something of a shooting gallery, with meteors careening everywhere. The Earth is a very fat, very slow target for such flying rubble, but the high speed of the approaching rocks and the density of the planet's air cause anything but the biggest pieces of debris to burn up on their way down, producing nothing more dangerous than shooting stars.

That's not to say we're at zero risk from space junk. In the 50 years since the launch of Sputnik, the world's first satellite, and Explorer I, America's first satellite, rocket builders from all over the world have fired so much heavy hardware into space that the planet is now surrounded by a belt of litter consisting of some 10,000 objects four inches or more in diameter and many tens of thousands of smaller ones. Taken together, they're estimated to represent more than 900,000 lbs. of flying — and possibly falling — rubbish.

In 2006, wreckage from a plummeting Russian spy satellite whizzed dangerously close to a Latin American Airbus carrying 270 passengers. That near-miss took place over the Pacific Ocean, which is considered among the safest places in the world to bring down satellites due to its unpopulated vastness. The worst uncontrolled reentry in history occurred in July 1979, when Skylab, America's abandoned, 78-ton space station — which had long since run out of maneuvering fuel — came down earlier than planned, raining debris across the Australian outback.

Often, however, satellites and other spacecraft are brought down in a much more controlled way, their trajectories tweaked and adjusted before their terminal plunge so that they strike a precisely selected — and safely empty — spot. In 2000, the 17-ton Compton Gamma Ray Observatory was gently steered back to earth this way. In 1970, one of the most storied spacecraft of all — the Apollo 13 lunar module, which served as a lifeboat for the crew when their command module was crippled by an explosion — sparked fears of nuclear contamination since it was on a return path to collide with Earth still carrying radioactive instruments that were supposed to have been left on the surface of the moon. As reentry approached and the astronauts clambered back into the command module through the tunnel that linked the two ships, the soon-to-be-jettisoned lunar module was already being targeted for a landing in a deep ocean trench off the coast of New Zealand. There it splashed down and sank — and there it remains.

The comparatively small spy satellite now wobbling its way home will not have nearly so precise a landing — but it is likely to have an equally uneventful one. Seventy percent of the Earth's surface is water, meaning that there ought to be a 7 in 10 chance that the craft will drop in the drink. The fact that satellites are usually targeted for flight over land narrows those odds some, but the equally important fact that the majority of the Earthly land mass is uninhabited widens them back up. That plus the small size of the doomed craft probably means its death will be nothing more than a pleasant sky show for the few people lucky enough to see it. If you're the kind inclined to worry, you might have to pick another problem.

The original version of this story incorrectly stated that the U.S. spy satellite expected to fall back to Earth weighs 20,000 lbs. It weighs 7,000 lbs.

Where exactly is this satelite going to land?

Where exactly is this satelite going to land?

Without sounding like a smartazz, all the scientists and rocket scientists can tell us is that it will land exactly somewhere on Earth.

With the Earth 70% water, its probably going to be an ocean landing (statistically speaking).

Thats about all they're sure of.