I can't wait to see the ISS come down one day and see where it lands! Two refrigerators will just burn up entering the atmosphere rather quickly so not much will be seen anywhere .
Wasn't the Russian space station Mir effectively the largest piece of space crap to enter our atmosphere?
Wouldn't it be cool when it's finally time for the ISS to be decomissioned They place a 50 megaton nuke in it and blow it up
50 megatons! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Isn't that a little overkill? Then you'd have little pieces of shit everywhere orbiting around the Earth hitting satellites and other things in orbit as well.
Yes. The article you quoted said "largest piece of space junk ever dropped from the orbital outpost". Not quite same thing.
They simply let it go -- over 15 months ago. The ISS orbits at ~350 km altitude, well within the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Without any thrusters, the EAS' orbit gradually decayed due to atmospheric drag. The ISS would suffer the exact same fate were it not for the periodic jet firings that raise it to a higher altitude. In the Pacific Ocean between Australia and New Zealand. http://www.space.com/news/081103-space-station-debris-burnup.html A piece of space trash the size of a refrigerator plunged into the Earth's atmosphere late Sunday to burn up over the southern Pacific Ocean, more than a year after an astronaut tossed it off the International Space Station, NASA officials said today. Space station program manager Mike Suffredini told reporters the orbital trash, a 1,400-pound (635-kg) tank of toxic ammonia coolant, slammed into the Earth's atmosphere at an altitude of about 50 miles (80 km) as it flew above the ocean just south of Tasmania. "What debris may have been still together after re-entry, it fell into the ocean between Australia and New Zealand," Suffredini said during a NASA briefing. "I know a lot of folks were wondering what the end result of that was." NASA expected up to 15 pieces of the tank to survive the fiery plunge, ranging in size from about 1.4 ounces (40 grams) to nearly 40 pounds (17.5 kg). The largest pieces, if they survived, may have hit the ocean at speeds of up to 100 mph (164 kph).