Fox News has a site that claims to be tracking the satellite due to fall to earth in a matter of hours.
As I write this, its altitude is 168 and speed 7.85, but the map doesn’t say the units. Must be either kilometers or miles and KPH or MPH. Height is increasing, but that may be due to an eccentric orbit. Over the Indian Ocean right now.
Any bets where it will splash or crash down?
Why does it look like an Oreo?
You must be hungry. It looks less Oreo-ish up close.
Miles per second, right?
If it’s miles, yes, it must be per second, but I haven’t been able to find the exact units. Its nominal orbit was around 300 miles high, but that was when it was functional.
I’m sure it’s going a lot faster than 8 kph! If it’s 8 kps, that’s about 30,000 kph.
My bet is it splashes.
Altitude is increasing at the moment (it’s up to 174), which at first seemed odd, but I suspect that’s natural. I think it would be the natural result of reducing your velocity using propulsion. It could also happen from drag, but only if density varies considerably (rather than increasing more or less monotonically). I think I just flunked the astrophysics quiz.
And now it’s back down to 160. 174 was over Antarctica, and now it’s between Australia and Peru. Interesting.
The odds are it will, since most of the Earth is water.
I thought the upward swings were just due to the orbit not being perfectly circular.
I watched it for about 20 minutes, during which it was streadily decreasing in altitude, and calculated it would be on the ground in less than an hour. Then when it went up, my estimate was thrown off. It’s going to take a little longer than I thought.
Anyone know what the yellow dot on Austrailia signifies? A tracking station?
Here’s a different page for the same data, and this one has the units:
It looks like the units on the big map (first link) are km/s for speed and km for altitude.
Your second link doesn’t work for me, but the units on the first page have to be miles per second, or maybe even nautical miles per second.
During the part of the cycle that the satellite’s traveling most closely directly north or south, it covers a degree of latitude in fewer than 10 seconds. A degree of latitude is about 69 miles, and (by definition) 60 nautical miles.
Nope, if the value is 7.92, it looks more like km/s.
I am getting “temporarily unavailable” on the one link sometimes. Try this (has units and conversions):
ETA: Sorry, same link. Must be popular right now. Here’s a clip from that page:
ALTITUDE [km]: 158.74
ALTITUDE [mi]: 98.64
SPEED [km/s]: 7.91
SPEED [mi/s]: 4.92
Instead of wild-guessing where it will put down, let’s stake out our preferences of where we’d like it to go splat.
Wall Street or D.C. anyone?
I don’t know where I got that 300 mi nominal orbit figure, but it looks like 121-125 miles is more like it. The sat started out higher, and was deliberately moved over time, or allowed to decay:
31.5825° N, 97.5439° W
(I kid)
I think it’s the suns position, right now it’s over southern Africa.
Is the tracking site still working for anyone? Or has the craft landed? One site seems frozen, with no live updates, the other says “not available.” The last position given is mid-Pacific, altitude 185.96 km.
I opened up the link in a new window (Chrome) and it seems to be working now. 155km and rising, heading for Greenland.
Yes. Photo.
+1 for username/post combo.
Ha – you can’t fool me. That’s a Venusian spaceship from Zeta Reticuli. Billy Meier told me all about it.
