Posted on 03/28/2007 5:54:06 PM PDT by blam
'Flaming debris' nearly hits jet
The pilots of a Chilean passenger jet reported seeing flaming debris fall past their aircraft as it approached the airport at Auckland, New Zealand. Lan airline said the captain "made visual contact with incandescent fragments several kilometres away".
New Zealand and Australian media suggested the debris was from a Russian satellite expected to enter the atmosphere later in the day.
But the US space agency Nasa said it was more likely to have been meteors.
'40 second margin'
The Lan Airbus A340 had just entered New Zealand airspace as it approached Auckland's airport when the debris shot by.
The pilots reported the near-miss to air traffic controllers, reportedly saying the noise of the debris breaking the sound barrier could be heard above the roar of his aircraft's engines.
The New Zealand Herald newspaper calculated the debris missed the jet by a margin of 40 seconds.
The plane landed safely and continued to its final destination in Sydney, Australia, a short while later.
Initial media reports in New Zealand said the debris was thought to be the remains of a Russian satellite.
New Zealand air traffic control officials had been warned by Russian authorities that a spacecraft was due to fall into the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday.
But the debris was spotted by the pilots 12 hours earlier than the time advised by the Russians.
An orbital debris expert at Nasa told Associated Press news agency that he had checked with the Russians and that their vessel - a spacecraft resupplying the International Space Station - had fired its re-entry rockets 12 hours after the Chileans reported the near miss.
The Nasa expert, Nicholas Johnson, said no other space junk was expected to be re-entering atmosphere at that time so the pilots probably saw a meteor.
Evidence Of Tunguska-Type Impacts Over The Pacific Basin Around The Year 1178 AD
That'll unkink your colon.
just damn...
I was flying my plane from Savannah GA to Atlanta (Cobb County - RYY) airport at night and around 5000 ft when a flaming meteor (about beach ball size) passed directly in front of the aircraft approx. 1/4 mile away....
I watched it pass by and it appeared to burn out around 2-3K ft.....
Killed my night vision for several minutes...
Ahem, it's always something.
It would be interesting if the pilot had noticed the angle of decent, direction, etc.
Meteorites, or space debris for that matter, normally don't travel vertically.
The Telegraph (UK)
By Paul Chapman, in Wellington
Last Updated: 2:04am BST 29/03/2007
A passenger jet was less than a minute from being struck by the burning wreckage of a Russian spaceship as it fell from orbit.
The pilot of the plane, which was flying from Santiago, Chile, to Auckland, New Zealand, reported seeing flaming space junk over the Pacific about five miles away
. Travelling at roughly 500mph, that means the Airbus A340, owned by LAN Airlines of Chile, was less than a minute from the wreckage.
The pilot told air traffic controllers in Auckland that he could see a piece of debris lighting up as it fell through the atmosphere on Tuesday. He could hear it "rumbling" over the aircraft's engines.
New Zealand aviation officials yesterday blamed Russian space authorities for supplying inaccurate information about the spacecraft's re-entry time and location.
The emergency was picked up by an Australian who was tuned in to the high frequency radio broadcasts. The pilot "reported that the rumbling noise from the space debris could be heard over the noise of the aircraft", the enthusiast said. "He was one very worried pilot, as you would imagine. It's not something you come across every day."
The controllers sent an urgent warning to an Argentinian aircraft, which was in the same area.
Steven Anderson, assistant secretary of the Australian and International Pilots Association, said the debris could have had catastrophic consequences if it had struck the aircraft.
"For the pilot to have heard it means one of two things - the debris was a lot closer than he thinks or it was bigger, and going at quite a high speed."
Captain Anderson said the noise meant the pieces were travelling faster than the speed of sound "which is what he has heard - the sound barrier." Analysts believe the spacecraft was Russia's Progress 23P cargo freighter, launched last October to dock with the International Space Station.
The unmanned vehicle already had a troubled history, with astronauts having to conduct a space walk to free an antenna that had become wedged in the space station's handrail when it arrived.
Progress left the space station on Tuesday and was due to burn up in the upper layers of the atmosphere. The Chilean jet was about 2,000 miles east of New Zealand and cruising at around 30,000 feet when the incident happened. It later landed safely at Auckland.
Ken Mitchell, a spokesman for Airways New Zealand, which provides air navigation services in New Zealand, told The Daily Telegraph last night that a warning had been issued to airlines based on information received from the Russians. He said that debris falling about five miles from the plane meant there had been a "very close miss", given the jet's likely cruising speed of around 500mph.
"We are taking this incident very seriously," Mr Mitchell said. "It is an event that we certainly don't appreciate happening in our airspace, and we want to make sure nothing like it happens again."
A report has been logged, and recordings of conversations between the pilot and controllers are expected to be handed to investigators in the next few days.
Weather balloon.
Ok, so it was a FLAMING weather balloon....
He plotted the orbital tracks of every known man-made satellite, old boosters, other space junk, ISS...etc... including their nominal rates of decay.
Once he had all this data up & running in a super-duper gee-whiz-bang computer... the study introduced a random collision of one foreign object (sizeable meteoroid) colliding with just one of the sizeable satellites.
Plotting random divisions into segments of wreckage, and nominally adjusted orbits into new unique paths after this first incident -- and allowing the data model to continue running --
After a short interval there was another collision --- making more wreckage fragments in more unique orbital paths (uncontrolled...)---
And again.... soon after.... and again... and again.... etc...
Until at some point -- most constellations of man-made spaceware were only marginally usable -- if at all... and manned orbital spaceflight would be prohibited ---
An earth would look like Saturn -- with one or more man-made (useless junk) rings...
AND that many more unscheduled re-entry events of the cascading fragments....
Kinda like this Chilean captain had an eyeful thereof...
It was a fsscinating study... and after all the math reported out of the project -- not that entirely far-fetched...
JMHO....
BTTT
??
It's space debris from some Russian stuff .. and all aircraft were warned.
Here's the link:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1808512/posts
Scary prospect. We've got to get off this earth before we screw it up....and can't get off, lol.
;-)
Man, I had a drink like that once!
And just as surely as what goes up must come down, somewhere in that report it was noted that it was all Bush's Fault!®
LOL...Shame on you....never drink and fly.....
:^)
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