NASA Satellite Falls to Earth, But Debris Location Still a Mystery

No reports yet of damage or injury from UARS spacecraft, agency says.

Defying predictions one last time, NASA's doomed UARS satellite dove through Earth's atmosphere late last night over the North Pacific Ocean, off the U.S. West Coast, the space agency says. (Also see "Space Debris: Five Unexpected Objects That Fell to Earth.")

As recently as Friday morning, U.S. officials had forecast that the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, would fall out of the sky in the late afternoon or early evening Friday, eastern time.

(See "NASA Satellite Falling Faster Due to Solar Activity.")

But the satellite shifted position as it tumbled toward the planet, forcing scientists to throw out their earlier time estimates.

NASA said early Saturday that UARS fell out of orbit sometime between 11:23 p.m. and 1:09 a.m. ET.

Amateur satellite trackers in places such as San Antonio, Texas, and northernMinnesota reported catching glimpses of UARS as it made its final, doomed circles around Earth.

Though the spacecraft plummeted over the Pacific, it's still not clear exactly where debris from the satellite has landed. Pieces of the satellite will be strung along a debris "footprint" stretching 500 miles (800 kilometers).

So far there are "no reports of any damage or injury," NASA said via Twitter close to midday Saturday.

Satellite Pieces Not For Sale

UARS, which weighed more than six tons, was lofted into orbit by the space shuttle Discovery in 1991. The craft recorded data on Earth's atmosphere until it was switched off in 2005.

Some 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of debris from the satellite were projected to survive the superheated descent through the atmosphere. The biggest intact piece, NASA said, would probably be a 300-pound (140-kilogram) chunk of the spacecraft's structure.

NASA warned the curious not to touch any pieces of the spacecraft that may have made it to the ground, because of the risk of sharp edges.

The space agency also tried to head off sales of UARS remnants on Internet auction sites such as eBay.

"Any pieces of UARS found are still the property of the country that made it," NASA warned via Twitter this morning. "You'll have to give 'em back to U.S."

Now, Virtual Tickets accepted by Indian Railways – No need of physical printouts!

It is nice to see that Indian Railways is making life easier for Railway commuters – as well as for our environment. Imagine the number of trees that would have been needed to cut just for the Ticket Reservation printouts that lakhs of consumers carry on daily basis when they set-off on Indian Railways journey.�

According to the announcement on IRCTC website – Commuters can now carry their Electronic Reservation Slip (ERS) virtually. What this essentially means is you can just show a screenshot of your e-ticket on any device and it will be treated as Valid.

Indian Railways calls it "Virtual Reservation Message" or VRM. So, if you have a mobile with camera that should be enough to create a VRM. Book your ticket online, take a snapshot using your mobile camera of the e-ticket and show it to Ticket Checker along with your Valid Identity Proof.

If you are carrying a Smartphone, it is even easier – you can login to internet and show your e-ticket itself!

Couple of months back, Indian Railways had also announced that it will launching a Mobile applicationthat will make it possible for commuters to book the tickets on mobile itself.  Once booked, the SMS sent out by the app will serve as a ticket itself and can be shown to the Ticket Checker along with your personal identification!

Personally, I am super-delighted with this development like millions of other Indian Railway Commuters. I travel Pune-Mumbai quite frequently on Deccan Queen. It has always been a pain carrying a printout. But now with a mobile in my hand I don't have to worry at all!

Have you taken advantage of this "Virtual Reservation Message" or VRM already? If not, you should for your next train journey!

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Google+ opens social network to everyone

Vic Gundotra, Google's senior vice president of social business: "We think there's lots of room for innovation"

Google+ is being opened up for anyone to join after two-and-a-half months in closed testing.

The search firm's latest foray into social networking was initially offered to journalists and people working in technology related fields.

However, members' ability to invite friends meant its user base quickly grew to tens of millions.

Google+ has been praised for several innovative features including its multi person "hangouts" video chat.

Two weeks after it launched, the company announced that its service had attracted 10 million users.

It has not produced official figures since then, although estimates by web analytic firm Comscore put membership at 25 million by the end of the first month.

Despite users' apparently rapid uptake, research carried out by Australian web software maker 89n suggested that the rate of public posting was declining. The survey did not take account of private postings.

Social search

Alongside its full public launch, Google is adding several new features to the service, including video hangouts on Android smartphones - allowing multi-person chats.

Users will also be able to share the content of their computer screens with whoever they are talking to.

Continue reading the main story

Another notable addition is the integration of search within Google+, allowing members to find results from socially shared information, as well as across the wider web.

The prospect of "social search" through Google would appeal to businesses, according to social networking specialist Matt Rhodes from Fresh Networks.

"Brands know that a lot of people who come to them come through search and anything they can do make themselves come up through the right terms or higher up the rankings is important. Commercially that is the opportunity," he said.

"If you are logged into Google and search for supermarkets, if some of my friends have plus 1'd Tesco or commented about it, that might push Tesco above Sainsbury's in my search results."

Myspace founder Tom Anderson - an active Google+ user - told BBC News: "Failure is not an option for Google on this. The fate of their business depends on social in the long run, so I think they'll keep tweaking and reminding users until they get it right."

Rivals' response

The rise of Google+ has not gone un-noticed by its competitors.

Facebook has recently rolled out a number of innovations which many observers have characterised as a direct response to the Google challenge, although the company argues that these have been in the pipeline for far longer.

These include a revamp of the social network's friend system, making in easier to add people to categories, similar to Google Circles.

Earlier this week it was revealed that Facebook users would be able to connect their status updates directly to their Twitter feed, in a move that may enhance the appeal of both Google rivals.

Conversely, Google finds itself in the unusual position of being a minority player in the market, facing Twitter's 200 million users and Facebook's 750 million.

Vic Gundotra, Google's senior vice president of social business told the BBC that he welcomed the competition.

"We suspect people use many different tools to share," he said.

"The most popular mechanism people use to share today is email. So we think there's lots of room for innovation."

with regards,
Jayaprakash.K

NASA satellite expected to hit Earth this week

The sky is not falling. A 12,500-pound NASA satellite the size of a school bus is, however.

It's the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS — YOU-arz — and it's currently tumbling in orbit and succumbing to Earth's gravity. It will crash to the surface Friday.

Or maybe Thursday. Or Saturday.

Out-of-control crashing satellites don't lend themselves to exact estimates even for the precision-minded folks at NASA. The uncertainty about the "when" makes the "where" all the trickier, because a small change in the timing of the reentry translates into thousands of miles of difference in the crash site.

As of the moment, NASA says the 35-foot-long satellite will crash somewhere between 57 degrees north latitude and 57 degrees south latitude — a projected crash zone that covers most of the planet, and particularly the inhabited parts. In this hemisphere, that includes everyone living between northern Newfoundland and the frigid ocean beyond the last point of land in South America.

Polar bears and Antarctic scientists are safe.
It's the biggest piece of NASA space junk to fall to Earth in more than 30 years. It should create a light show. The satellite will partially burn up during reentry and, by NASA's calculation, break into about 100 pieces, creating fireballs that should be visible even in daytime.
An estimated 26 of those pieces will survive the re-entry burn and will spray themselves in a linear debris field 500 miles long. The largest chunk should weigh about 300 pounds.

As the Friday-ish crash gets closer, NASA will refine its estimate of timing and location, but the fudge factor will remain high.
"There are too many variations on solar activity which affect the atmosphere, the drag on the vehicle," said Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA. He said that when NASA estimates that the satellite is two hours away from hitting Earth, there will still be a margin of error of 25 minutes.

"That equates to plus or minus 5,000 miles. That's a lot of real estate," he said.
The good news is that UARS will probably splatter into the open ocean, because Earth is a water planet. And humans, for all their sprawl, occupy a very limited portion of its surface.

NASA did a calculation of the odds that someone would be struck by UARS debris. It's very unlikely: about a 1-in-3,200 chance that one person somewhere in the world would be hit. That's not the odds for any specific person (say, a reader of this story), but for the entire human population, which is about 7 billion.

Used fuel tanks and rocket bodies fall to Earth frequently, Johnson said, "and in over 50 years of these things coming back around the world, no one has ever been hurt. There has never been any significant property damage."

The satellite was launched on the space shuttle Discovery in 1991 and spent 14 years studying the atmosphere as part of an effort to understand, among other things, the human influence on climate change. It measured chemicals that damage the ozone layer, aerosols from Mount Pinatubo and changes in solar radiation that affect the upper atmosphere. But NASA decided in 2005 that UARS's work had become redundant to that performed by other satellites, and it received its scientific pink slip.