The German satellite crashed somewhere in Southeast Asia.

[snagglepuss]

snip

Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said the satellite appears to have gone down over Southeast Asia. He said two Chinese cities with millions of inhabitants each, Chongqing and Chengdu, had been in the satellite's projected path during its re-entry time.

“But if it had come down over a populated area there probably would be reports by now,” the astrophysicist, who tracks man-made space objects, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Calculations based on U.S. military data indicate that satellite debris must have crashed somewhere east of Sri Lanka over the Indian Ocean, or over the Andaman Sea off the coast of Myanmar, or further inland in Myanmar or as far inland as China, he said.

The satellite entered the atmosphere between 9:45 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. Saturday ET and would have taken 15 minutes or less to hit the ground, the German Aerospace Center said. Hours before the re-entry, the center said the satellite was not expected to land in Europe, Africa or Australia.




http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/german-satellite-crashed-in-southeast-asia-scientist/article2210672/



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I was up last night continually searching for information about the projected path and there was no information, only terse statements that it wasn't going to fall in Europe, Africa or Australia. Now it seems there was a projected path and two huge cities were in that path. One has to wonder whether authorities should withhold such projections to avoid panic, or inform people to be prepared? Not a moot question as I read that there are something like 50 satellites that will be falling over the next few decades.