If a calculation is off by half an hour, the falling satellite has already traveled one-third of the way around the world.
NASA puts the chances that anything would hit anyone at 1 in 3,200 and notes that there are no known cases of injury by falling satellite, not even when its Skylab space station crashed into western Australia in 1979.
"The factual reality of using deployed missile defenses to destroy a falling satellite or a ballistic missile or even a meteor from space that would risk human life is an achievement for mankind," a statement from the organization said.
The falling satellite, about one-tenth the mass of Skylab, was launched in 1991 from the space shuttle Discovery to study the dynamics and chemistry of the upper atmosphere and was decommissioned in 2005 when its fuel ran out and its batteries failed.
The betting markets are usually sporting events but in the UK, where bookmaking is more generally legal, bookies will quote prices on just about anything: Academy Awards, Presidential elections, where a falling satellite will crash into the Earth.
"Damages caused by falling objects," including falling satellites, are generally covered, the institute says.
Moreover, the frequent occurrence of falling satellites also affects the ambiguity subset fixed.
For medium-long-baselines, the number of resolved ambiguity is relatively stable and the problem of newly-rising or falling satellites is effectively suppressed.
I thought that airborne terrorists were more of a personal threat than deranged gun owners or falling satellites.
All I could recollect was the sound of Spinelli's voice reciting his adventures: Spinelli going up the Congo with a crew of mercenaries, looking for a fallen Soviet satellite; Spinelli in Angola, submerged in a shallow river, like a hippo, invisible to a Cuban patrol; Spinelli in a Durban restaurant, spooning raw monkey brain out of a cut-open skull.
