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      WASHINGTON - NASA says it is not aware of any
injuries or property damage from a defunct 6-ton satellite that has
fallen from the sky.


      The agency posted on its website that the spacecraft crashed
through the atmosphere early Saturday morning somewhere over the
north Pacific Ocean. An exact location was not known.

      The bus-sized satellite first penetrated Earth's atmosphere
somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, according to NASA and the U.S.
Air Force's Joint Space Operations Center. But that doesn't
necessarily mean it all fell into the sea.

      Most of it was believed to have burned up.

      NASA's earlier calculations had predicted that the 20-year-old
former climate research satellite would fall over a 500-mile swath
and could include land.


      Because the plummet began over the ocean and given the lack of
any reports of people being hit, that "gives us a good feeling
that no one was hurt," but officials didn't know for certain, NASA
spokesman Steve Cole told The Associated Press.


      The two government agencies said the 35-foot satellite fell
sometime between 11:23 p.m. EDT Friday and 1:09 a.m. EDT Saturday,
but with no precise time or location.


      There was rampant speculation on the Internet and Twitter, much
of it focusing on unconfirmed reports and even video of debris over
Alberta, Canada.


      Cole said that was possible because the last track for the
satellite included Canada, starting north of Seattle and then in a
large arc north then south. From there, the track continued through
the Atlantic south toward Africa, but it was unlikely the satellite
got that far if it started falling over the Pacific.


      Cole said NASA was hoping for more details from the Air Force,
which was responsible for tracking debris.


      But given where the satellite may have fallen, officials may
never quite know precisely.


      "Most space debris is in the ocean. It'll be hard to confirm,"
Cole said.


      Some 26 pieces of the satellite representing 1,200 pounds of
heavy metal had been expected to rain down somewhere. The biggest
surviving chunk should be no more than 300 pounds.


      The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite is the biggest NASA
spacecraft to crash back to Earth, uncontrolled, since the
post-Apollo 75-ton Skylab space station and the more than 10-ton
Pegasus 2 satellite, both in 1979.


      Russia's 135-ton Mir space station slammed through the
atmosphere in 2001, but it was a controlled dive into the Pacific.


      Before UARS fell, no one had ever been hit by falling space junk
and NASA expected that not to change.


      NASA put the chances that somebody somewhere on Earth would get
hurt at 1-in-3,200. But any one person's odds of being struck were
estimated at 1-in-22 trillion, given there are 7 billion people on
the planet.


      The satellite ran out of fuel and died in 2005. UARS was built
and launched before NASA and other nations started new programs
that prevent this type of uncontrolled crashes of satellite.

Gallery

Science

NASA's dead 6-ton satellite plunged to Earth
early Saturday, but more than eight hours later, U.S. space
officials didn't know just where it hit. They thought the fiery
fall was largely over water and the debris probably hurt no one.

NASA: 6-ton satellite hits Earth; location unknown

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