NASA has released the final update on the UARS bird that burned up in re-entry last week: it came down in the Pacific, west of the US. The Earth's atmosphere is not a lid over us, but gets thinner with height, so it's hard to define exactly what it means to say that the satellite burned up at such-and-such a spot. However, at 04:01 UTC on September 24th, the satellite's motion became dominated by the Earth's atmosphere, and for all intents and purposes that can be called the point where it came back in... or at least, where it started. The forward motion of the satellite took the pieces along a track 500 - 1300 km (300 to 800 miles) long, which is still safely out in the ocean. Thus ends the UARS tale.
... but we're not quite done yet. The venerable German astronomical satellite ROSAT is due to ...
