Chunks of deorbiting ESA satellite are expected to reach the ground ESA's ERS-2 satellite is heading back to Earth this week and some substantial fragments are likely to survive re-entry, although the chances of anyone being injured by a hunk of space junk are vanishingly small. The UK Space Agency (UKSA) posted some images of the doomed European Remote Sensing (ERS-2) satellite at the end of …
The actual statement on the website is "The annual risk of an individual human being injured by space debris is under 1 in 100 billion."
So it is about a 1 in 13 chance per year that someone will get injured (or maybe a bit less, as multiple people can get hit in the same year).
I don't know where they got the figures from, but they've found some reassuring generic figures, rather than work out the chances of being injured by these particular two tonnes of junk.
Most of us here on earth are far more likely to be injured by a two tonne machine on wheels than one falling from the sky, partly because there are far more of them about.
... I would have sworn that a drummer from Spinal Tap was killed by a re-entering satellite. However, I can't find any reference to this event.
It is possible that my source was the commentary track from the 1998 DVD, but is looking more likely that just imagined it.
https://zeroenthusiasm.tumblr.com/post/47032679583/list-of-spinal-tap-drummers-all-deceased
Remember kids, don't sell your dialysis machine to buy drugs.
>>I would have sworn that a drummer from Spinal Tap was killed by a re-entering satellite
I thought he either spontaneously combusted or choked on vomit (although they didn’t specify whose vomit). They've had so many drummers though that if a satellite strike hasn’t already taken one out it would be a good bet for the future.
Don't know about the Spinal Tap guy, but Maggie O'Connell's boyfriend was killed by a falling satellite in Northern Exposure - that was a particularly hardy piece of kit, as it still had its antennae intact at the funeral (they just don't make 'em like that anymore).
Ahhhhh, thank you @thatoneinthecorner... Yeah, I enjoyed Northern Exposure back in nineties, prior to my first viewing of Spinal Tap. That's where I got the idea from. You've eased my itchy brain.
They had some good funerals on Northern Exposure, I enjoyed the one with the trebuchet launching the coffin into the lake.
The internet tells me that as of last month it is a available to stream for the first time, after some longstanding issues around rights have been resolved.
The Zik Zak corporation turned this sort of thing into an annual festival, Sky Clearance Day: bring your best metal umbrella and join the fun!
Max Headroom, prr-prr-prrredicting the future - well, 20 minutes into it, at least.
"Max Headroom, prr-prr-prrredicting the future - well, 20 minutes into it, at least."
...and weren't the MH scriptwriters clever, as they successfully predicted "blipverts" - very short duration adverts that appear without warning on TV programmes.
And gawd knows how many ears later in 2024, we have YouTube, NetFlix, Prime, Disney, TikTok all happily wasting our time, by screening videos about stuff we are not interested in (although thankfully, there does not appear to be an increase in deaths caused by watching adverts).
"...will end up in the ocean."
Umm, Which ocean did you have in mind? There are at least 6 that I can think of, and numerous large 'Seas'.
"Having used up the last of the fuel, the mission officially ended..."
While IANAAstrophysicist, why not deorbit this device while they still had fuel and could actually control, to a larger extent, where on Earth (literally) it was going to splash down?
I'm guessing at the time that was the extent of the end of life plan. Earn revenue until you are nearly out of station keeping fuel and then use the remaining fumes to park it out of the way of the next generation that needs to occupy that orbital position. What happens after that is Someone Else's Problem. They did say the mission officially ended in 2011...
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