"It shakes me! It quakes me!"

http://www.nature.com/news/incoming-space-junk-a-scientific-opportunity-1.18642

nature


Incoming space junk a scientific opportunity

Astronomers prepare to observe an impact off the coast of Sri Lanka.

Traci Watson

23 October 2015

Researchers call it sheer coincidence that a newly discovered piece of space junk is officially designated WT1190F. But the letters in the name, which form the acronym for an unprintable expression of bafflement, are an appropriate fit for an object that is as mysterious as it is unprecedented.

Scientists have worked out that WT1190F will plunge to Earth from above the Indian Ocean on 13 November, making it one of the very few space objects whose impact can be accurately predicted. More unusual still, WT1190F was a 'lost' piece of space debris orbiting far beyond the Moon, ignored and unidentified, before being glimpsed by a telescope in early October.

An observing campaign is now taking shape to follow the object as it dives through Earth’s atmosphere, says Gerhard Drolshagen, co-manager in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, of the European Space Agency’s near-Earth objects office. The event not only offers a scientific opportunity to watch something plunge through the atmosphere, but also tests the plans that astronomers have put in place to coordinate their efforts when a potentially dangerous space object shows up. “What we planned to do seems to work,” Drolshagen says. “But it’s still three weeks to go.”

WT1190F was detected by the Catalina Sky Survey, a programme based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, aimed at discovering asteroids and comets that swing close to Earth. At first, scientists didn’t know what to make of this weird body. But they quickly computed its trajectory after collecting further observations and unearthing 2012 and 2013 sightings from telescope archives, says independent astronomy-software developer Bill Gray, who has been tracking the debris with astronomers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

WT1190F travels a highly elliptical orbit, swinging out twice as far as the Earth–Moon distance, Gray says. Gray’s calculations show that it will hit Earth at 6:20 utc, hitting the ocean about 65 kilometres off the southern tip of Sri Lanka. Much, if not all, of it will burn up in the atmosphere, but “I would not necessarily want to be going fishing directly underneath it”, Gray says.

The object is only 1 to 2 metres in size, and its trajectory shows that it has a low density, and is perhaps hollow. That suggests an artificial object, “a lost piece of space history that’s come back to haunt us”, says Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It could be a spent rocket stage or panelling shed by a recent Moon mission. It is also possible that the debris dates back decades, perhaps even to the Apollo era. An object seen orbiting Earth in 2002 was eventually identified as a discarded segment of the Saturn V rocket that launched the second mission to land men on the Moon.

WT1190F is a rare breed of space object. Researchers are currently tracking only 20 or so artificial objects in distant orbits, says Gareth Williams, an astronomer at the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There are probably many more such pieces of space junk in orbit around the Earth–Moon system, but it is impossible to say how many. No others are known to have made the return trip to Earth, although it is likely that some have done so without anyone noticing, McDowell says.

Drolshagen plans to get spectral information on the object, which may help to identify it, and he hopes to coordinate impact observations conducted onboard ships or aeroplanes. But that may be the end of the concerted effort to study this class of object. Unlike near-Earth asteroids, space debris that flies well away from Earth has not commanded significant amounts of funding or attention. And the US military, which tracks space debris, says that it lacks the ability to identify WT1190F or to predict its path.

“There is no official, funded effort to do tracking of deep-Earth orbits the way we track low-Earth orbit,” McDowell says. “I think that has to change”.










http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie7.html

Star Trek Generations (1994)


[Nexus Rockies farmhouse kitchen]

KIRK: Looks like somebody was trying to cook some eggs. ...Come on in. It's all right, it's my house. ...At least it used to be, I sold it years ago.

PICARD: I'm Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Starship ...Enterprise.

KIRK: The clock, ...I gave this clock to Bones.

PICARD: I'm from what you would consider the future, ...the twenty-fourth century.

(a dog barks in the doorway)

KIRK: Butler! ...Butler, how can you be here? ...He's been dead seven years.

ANTONIA (OC): Come on, Jim, I'm starving. How long have you been rattling around in that kitchen?

KIRK: Antonia! ...What are you talking about? ...The future? This is the past. ...This is nine years ago.

(Kirk gets a broken pair of spectacles out of a box)

KIRK: ...The day I told her I was going back to Starfleet.

KIRK: These are Ktarian eggs, ...It was her favourite. I was preparing them to soften the blow.

PICARD: I know how real this must seem to you, but it's not. This isn't really your house. We're both of us caught up in some kind of temporal nexus.

KIRK: Dill.

PICARD: I beg your pardon?

KIRK: Dill weed. ...In the cabinet, second shelf to the left, ...behind the oregano.

PICARD: How long have you been here?

KIRK: I don't know. I was aboard the Enterprise-B in the deflector control room... ...Stir these, will you?

(Kirk thrusts a hot frying pan into Picard's hands)

PICARD: Ow!

KIRK: The bulkhead in front of me disappeared. ...Then I found myself out here just now chopping wood, ...right before you walked up. Thanks.

PICARD: Look, ...history records that you died saving the Enterprise-B from an energy ribbon eighty years ago.

KIRK: You say this is the twenty-fourth century.

Picard: Aha.

KIRK: And I'm dead?










From 11/17/1994 ( premiere US film "Star Trek Generations" ) To 11/13/2015 is 7666 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 10/29/1986 ( premiere US TV series episode "Together We Stand"::"A Chicken in Every Wok" ) is 7666 days



From 3/16/1991 ( my first successful major test of my ultraspace matter transportation device as Kerry Wayne Burgess the successful Ph.D. graduate Columbia South Carolina ) To 11/13/2015 is 9008 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 7/2/1990 ( premiere US film "Die Hard 2" ) is 9008 days



From 3/5/1941 ( premiere US film "Ghost Treasure" ) To 3/16/1991 ( my first successful major test of my ultraspace matter transportation device as Kerry Wayne Burgess the successful Ph.D. graduate Columbia South Carolina ) is 18273 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 11/13/2015 is 18273 days



From 6/3/1955 ( premiere US film "The Seven Year Itch" ) To 6/13/2005 is 18273 days

From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 11/13/2015 is 18273 days





http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2015/10/Object_WT1190F

EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY


OBJECT WT1190F


Title Object WT1190F

Released 22/10/2015 10:39 am


Description Space object WT1190F observed on 9 October 2015 with the University of Hawaii 2.2-metre telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

The expected 13 November 2015 re-entry of WT1190F, a suspected rocket body, poses very little risk to anyone but could help scientists improve our understanding of how any object – man-made or natural – interacts with Earth’s atmosphere.










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048605/quotes

IMDb


The Seven Year Itch (1955)

Quotes


Richard Sherman: Wouldn't you like to know!










http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie7.html

Star Trek Generations (1994)


KIRK: And I'm dead?

PICARD: Not exactly. As I said, this is some kind of...

KIRK/PICARD: Temporal nexus.

KIRK: ...Yeah, I heard you.










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048605/releaseinfo

IMDb


The Seven Year Itch (1955)

Release Info

USA 3 June 1955



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048605/fullcredits

IMDb


The Seven Year Itch (1955)

Full Cast & Crew

Marilyn Monroe ... The Girl










http://www.chakoteya.net/movies/movie7.html

Star Trek Generations (1994)


KIRK: I take it the odds are against us, and the situation is grim?

PICARD: You could say that.










http://www.tv.com/shows/the-simpsons/trash-of-the-titans-1485/trivia/

tv.com


The Simpsons Season 9 Episode 22

Trash of the Titans

Aired Sunday 8:00 PM Apr 26, 1998 on FOX

Quotes


Moe: You're gonna need to come up with a slogan that people are gonna remember you by.

Homer: Awwh, can't someone else do it?

Moe: Can't someone else do it… that's PERFECT.



- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 05:41 AM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Tuesday 27 October 2015