Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Air-Space Tech: Jet's Flaming Space Junk Scare - UPDATE


Jano Gibson writes in The Sydney Morning Herald:

Pieces of space junk from a Russian satellite coming out of orbit narrowly missed hitting a jetliner over the Pacific Ocean overnight.

The pilot of a Lan Chile Airbus A340, which was travelling between Santiago, Chile, and Auckland, New Zealand, notified air traffic controllers at Auckland Oceanic Centre after seeing flaming space junk hurtling across the sky just five nautical miles in front of and behind his plane about 10pm.

According to a plane spotter, who was tuning into a high frequency radio broadcast at the time, the pilot "reported that the rumbling noise from the space debris could be heard over the noise of the aircraft."

More here.

UPDATE: 19:30 03/28/2007: Follow-up story here in The Sydney Morning Herald: "It Was A Meteorite, Not a Satellite, Says Russia".

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home