Maybe insurance against falling space derbis is worth it after all... They don't know when or where this one'll come down.

Huge Defunct Satellite to Plunge to Earth Soon

What if some of it falls on neutral Swiss ground?
Can we keep it, the debris, and open a museum with it?

Guess so.
Haven't you heard about finders keepers and all...

So, I'm off to get my Falling Space Debris Detector Radar Thingy out of the basement...

Indeed, one can never be too safe...

But wouldn't it be charred, possibly melted and deformed beyond recognition ?

Interestingly, there will be quite a bit of crap to collect, as they state "That appraisal indicated a surviving mass of 1,170 pounds (532 kilograms) falling within a debris footprint length of some 500 miles (800 kilometers)." Luckily, NASA claims that "The risk to public safety or property is extremely small, and safety is NASA's top priority," noted a NASA website dedicated to the re-entry."

After reading in the Blick about a villa with pavement done with fossilized dinossaur bones (AWEEEEEESOME) and meteorite stone (AWEEEEEEEESOME) I think the idea of a "charred, possibly melted and deformed beyond recognition" satelite piece would probably turn out to be an awesome modern art sculpture to put in my future dinossaur living room!

I'll join the sattelite debris search team! I need me a new piece of art!

But then again you might have to lug the 532kg chunk up the stairs.

Most likely yes yet you could always put up pictures of before, after and now... everything ends up as garbage anyway.

Anyway, other things are falling down from the sky too like those big ice chunks from airplanes ... god knows what else is gonna come down on our heads next.

You think I can call NASA and get some build up instructions like for IKEA pieces? Then I can comfortably let it be transported in smaller pieces...

I for one am extremely relieved by this statement. It was only the other day as I was playing golf during a thunderstorm in my metal trousers that I began to worry about being hit by a defunct satellite. Hurray for NASA!

I just hope that any falling debris doesn't leave chemtrails!

You can get a kit here, and get it launched too.

532kg & Terminal velocity.
Earth pulls at a constant acceleration of 9.81 meters/second. Without any wind resistance, you’ll fall 9.81 meters/second faster every second. 9.81 meters/second the first second, 19.62 meters/ second in the next second, etc.

Stuth, you are going to know about it. No need for a detector, just look out the window for the large hole full of Taiwanese components.

Where the hell is Superman when you need him.

<Geek hat on>
Well...not quite. The acceleration depends on many other things and is limited by the mass of the falling object, the height and the acceleration by the pulling object (earth in this case).

Considering a CS area of roughly 0.5 sqm and a mass of 532 kg, drag coefficent of about 2 (assuming it is a box type thingy) a density of 1.5 kg/cu meter and gravity of 1 g...

Max velocity reached would be around 83.4 m/s.
For comparison, an airplane has a velocity of about 272.22 m/s.

The kinetic energy of the said object (mass * acc. by gravity * height) would be roughly 1.85 x 10^6 joules.
For comparison, 1 g of TNT has 4.184×10^3 Joules. So almost like a kilo of TNT.
<Geek hat off>

Some seriously dodgy science there, m'boy

I remember something like this when I was a wee lad in 1st grade

Anyone up for some satellite bingo? Everyone pick a latitude/longitude intersection - whole numbers only - and the person who picks the spot closest to the largest remaining pieces gets crowned King or Queen of the Space Debris. If we weren't spread all over the country we could have made it a bit more interesting with an entry fee of 1 chuff per point chosen and the money used for prizes.

How was life without microprocessors?

I knew how to use a Curta when I was 6.