New Delhi: Out of control and loaded with toxic fuel, a nine ton US satellite, the size of a bus is hurtling towards earth. Experts predict it could hit us around late February, however, they have no idea yet where precisely it could land.
Not only this, but there are more than 10,000 other pieces of space junk circling our planet, from four inch wide spanners to 78 ton satellites. Sometimes they slam into spacecrafts, that could have fatally damaged Kalpana Chawla's Columbia. Other times, they simply fall to earth, like space station Skylab in 1979.
So how do you take out a dangerous satellite? China simply shot one down last year and both US and Russia have similar technology. Lasers could be used to burn them up and that avoids creating even more, smaller pieces of junk. Some even suggest futuristic gravitational weapons or huge blobs of Aerogel that could steal the satellite and its secrets before the US gets its hands on it. However, that till now, is strictly fiction.
The sky is not going to fall on anyone. Lots of space junk simply burns up when entering the atmosphere and this US satellite probably will too.
The only case when someone was hit by man-made space debris was in 1997. An American woman was hit by a small-blackened metallic piece from a US rocket, however she was not injured.
Deadlier than these satellites are Asteroids. Centuries ago, they wiped out the dinosaurs and in 1908, one destroyed huge parts of Siberia. With impacts more powerful than all world's nuclear bombs combined, it's one of those that could really wipe out earth.
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