Rest In Peace Uars Options

[BPCooper]

The Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite, deployed Sept. 12 1991 from the Space Shuttle Discovery, was decomissioned today. It's last good battery shorted out in August and planning to end the mission went as planned and concluded today with the shutting down of the satellite. Last week, a several-minute burn lowered the orbit of the satellite.

It is expected to make an uncontrolled reentry in 2008 or 2009. UARS opened a wealth of understanding on the upper and lower atmospheric layers including monitoring the ozone layer.

[SolarSystemRubbl...]

As of 1000 UTC today, the orbit is down to 195 x 209 km (121 x 130 mi) falling at a rate of 8 (perigee) and 11 (apogee) nper day.

This has not yet been incorporated into the reentry time forecast, that's still based on yesterday's orbit update, which predicted Sept 23 20:36 UTC +/- 20 hours:

http://reentrynews.aero.org/1991063b.html

When it get down to about 120 km, the atmosphere grabs it, and it falls during that orbit.

MW/SSR