Friends,

This is not meant to frighten anyone, but some of you are living within the potential debris field of a large satellite that will decay from orbit later this week. Those of you living in northwest Washington, central California, and southeast Alabama need to be especially vigilant. Plan where you would go, should you be alerted that you are in the danger area. The safe place should offer overhead protection for something as heavy as 350 pounds dropping from the sky. The risk is relatively low, even if you are in the debris area. Don’t be afraid. Just be alert as to when the UARS track will be over your area, and what its status is. There may be little or no warning that it is making its final drop out of orbit.

I’ve put together a PowerPoint presentation that will show the ground tracks relative to your location for 22 through 24 September. http://floatingmid.com/UARS_Prelim_Tracks.ppt
The 22nd track will be the farthest west of the three. The 24th track is the one to the east. I don’t know how far off the track the debris field will extend.
Here’s a tracking map that shows where the reentry will occur (white square): http://reentrynews.aero.org/1991063b.html
More info: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-s...
More info and video: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/space-satellit...

Here is a website that should permit you to know where the satellite is in real-time. http://www.heavens-above.com/ It can be modified to give pass (time, elevation, range and azimuth) information relative to your location, by choosing your location from the database, or by entering the latitude and longitude of your location. If you modify it to your location, then save it to your Favorites, so the changes will be saved.

As the satellite is approaching your part of the world, you might want to think about being in a safe place for awhile.

Here is a technical briefing on UARS: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/585584main_UARS_Status.pdf

If the ground track is not near your area, I am sending this along because you might have the opportunity to see an amazing light show from you location.

I will be keeping up with this thing, and doing my best to give you good information. I’ll provide you more information later. Let me know if you have any specific questions.

Frank