Mysterious Fires Rip Across Texas Sky at Pat Dollard

Mysterious Fires Rip Across Texas Sky

February 16th, 2009 (10) Posted By .

The U.S. Strategic Command Monday said there’s no relation between the collision of two satellites over Siberia last week and the weekend shower of fireballs over Texas.

What looked like a fireball streaked across the Texas sky Sunday morning, leading many people to call authorities to report seeing falling debris.

Preliminary reports from Williamson County officials said a small aircraft went down, and then officials said it was likely space debris from two satellites crashing.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Sunday that it received numerous reports across Texas of falling debris, which could have been related to a recent U.S.-Russian satellite collision.

FAA spokesman Roland Herwig said officials suspected the debris could be related to the collision, but he said that had not been confirmed.

News 8 received numerous calls saying debris was falling around midmorning Sunday, what looked like a meteor. Some of the callers reported what looked like a fireball in the sky.

Williamson County officials combed the area in a helicopter searching for any trace of a small aircraft landing, but were unable to find anything.

The FAA notified pilots on Saturday to be aware of possible space debris after a collision Tuesday between U.S. and Russian communication satellites.

The chief of Russia’s Mission Control said clouds of debris from the collision will circle Earth for thousands of years and threaten numerous satellites.

The debris field from the collision is described as huge, but scientists are still trying to determine the full scope of the crash.

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http://daflikkers.blogspot.com/ Blogengeezer

With the constantly increasing number of man made objects encircling the Earth, and ever more likelihood of collisions over the centuries, The Earth may eventually have rings like Saturn. Pretty blue marble with disc rings?.. DaFlikkers
http://cjloop56yahoo.com CHUCK-O

The Gov says no, it wasn’t debris from the collision of the satellites. OK Assholes, was it a UFO??
Rich C.

Maybe this is an opportunity for mexican astronauts. Low orbit trash collectors. Go up and scoop up the debris. Put the leaf blowers to good use…
Ty

I’m sure it was somehow Bush’s fault.
Buck Hoff

I read a report the other day that said debris will be falling to earth for decades to come. The good news is they collided in low orbit, the bad news is what collides in low orbit falls back to earth.
MinneSoCold

Ty
I’m sure we’ll soon hear that from some wingnut.

Relax everyone, BO will soon fix it by creating rainbows across Amerika so the junk bounces off back into space.
Tom in CO

It’s the beginning of Doomsday because of Hussein.
MinneSoCold

Ty
…actually, I predict Algore to be that wingnut that Global Warming (due to Bush’s incompetencies) is causing expansion of the atmosphere resulting in satellite orbits to melt away. A polar bear will get struck by space junk and ManBearPig will cry “crisis of our time” and create “low orbit credits” that people can buy to offset their use of phones, TV and Google Earth.
Monkeysdad(one of the 24% of Bush’s approval rating)

Manbearpig. Isn’t there a reason we don’t have dinosaurs running around. The Polar bears will also disappear.
Buck Hoff

I wonder if we could become imprisoned by our own space junk? Unable to enter space because of the massive space debris field we’ve created for ourselves. All it takes is a few collisions to set off hundreds of more collisons between satellites and all the shit we tossed out in space.

I pulled this from an article from a NASA tech.

The critical question we should ask is, “Are we going to get serious about actively managing orbital debris?”

There is a real possibility that this collision will initiate a chain of other collisions. Other Iridium satellites may collide with pieces from the February 10th event.

The rate of collisions could then increase exponentially until all 66 active Iridium nodes and spares are rendered space debris. This series of collisions would then yield thousands of new debris objects that would then threaten other satellites.

The average time between collisions could possibly be reduced from tens of years to a year or less. One thing is certain, whatever happened over northern Siberia on Tuesday will be detrimental to space flight.

If there is any good news from this disaster, the International Space Station is in an orbit well below that of Iridium and does not appear to be immediately threatened by the new debris.

However, it is likely that some fraction of the resulting debris field will intercept the station’s altitude. A complete picture of the resulting debris distribution will not be available for several days.

Results of initial tracking indicate that there are nearly 300 new detectable fragments, but experience tells us that there are probably thousands of small pieces that cannot be tracked easily.

As the debris field spreads out around the globe various tracking networks will piece together the complete extent of this hazard.

The unfortunate Iridium satellite weighed as much as 1,400 pounds and it collided with a spacecraft of similar mass. You don’t have to be an expert to conclude that we have a problem.

Now imagine what might happen if all 95 Iridium satellites that were launched between 1997 and 2002 collided with the resulting debris.

At that point there would be a loud cry for action from all who use space. There soon could be no more direct-to-home satellite television, no more weather pictures from space, no more GPS navigation and no more access to space. Let’s not wait until it is too late!