Lost in space

Anyone hit by an unidentified flying object recently? Dena Rashed digs into the mystery surrounding the US satellite gone amuck over central Egypt. So much for modern technology
It all started with a news item on the front page of a leading Egyptian newspaper: "Egypt is safe from the debris of the American spacecraft that went off track!" the paper announced. What spacecraft?
The question proved difficult to answer. At the National Centre for Space and Geophysics (NCSG), the institution's head, Ali Te'elab, was a bit testy. "The answer to the fate of the American spacecraft is not here," Te'elab, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Go ask the United States about it." And no wonder he was in such a bad mood. The NCSG -- and, in fact, all the country's specialised agencies -- knew no more than anyone could read in the newspaper and find surfing the Internet.
Despite Egypt's launching of the NileSat satellite, the country's space programme remains very limited, particularly in terms of technology. "We do not manufacture satellites or spacecraft, so how could I know about this spacecraft?" remarked one specialised official, who preferred anonymity.
But Mohamed Adel Yehia, director of the National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Science (NARSS), was quite candid: "We, the NARSS, do not have the ability to detect that kind of spacecraft -- be it on track or not," Yehia told the Weekly.
And so the search took us to -- NASA, the US national space agency. A NASA press release explained that all this ado was about the agency's Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE, whose mission began on 7 July 1992). The EUVE "was the first astrophysics mission to explore the extreme ultraviolet," the release read. During its eight-year orbit, it "observed more than 1,000 nearby sources, including more than three dozen objects outside our galaxy."
Calculations made by the United States Space Command Control Center revealed that the satellite would re-enter the earth's atmosphere on 30 January over central Egypt. The satellite, according to the US Space Command, was "not designed to survive re-entry, and was expected to break up and mostly burn up in the atmosphere." Consequently, the craft did not have an on-board propulsion system -- a system that would allow engineers to control the spacecraft's re-entry. The bottom line: NASA does not have control over the time or location of the re-entry of such craft.
Normally, satellites have control stations and are directed to expire in a convenient location, like the Pacific Ocean. The former Soviet space station Mir was one such example, the NARSS's Yehia noted. But in the case of the EUVE, it remained very unclear as to where the craft would eventually break up. This uncertainty raised alarm bells, because although the craft was expected to burn up in the atmosphere, estimations showed that up to nine objects ranging from approximately four to 45 kilogrammes could survive re-entry. Much of this debris would be made of titanium and stainless steel.
According to Yehia, the material the US used in building the spacecraft is important for determining its track. Modern satellites are designed with materials that could be made to burn in outer space, if necessary. "Older models [like the EUVE], however, can break up when entering the atmosphere and travel for thousands of miles," he said.
NASA public affairs specialist Nancy Neal could not confirm whether any of the debris hit land or not. "Although it is a NASA spacecraft, we cannot detect the debris. That is the job of the US Space Command," she told the Weekly.
From the US Space Command, Captain Kristin Reimann, public affairs specialist, was unable to provide the Weekly with any conclusive answers. "USSPACECOM cannot confirm whether or not the pieces survived re-entry," she acquiesced. "Unless an object is actually found and returned to the proper authorities, we would have no knowledge of whether or not an object survived re-entry," she added.
Reimann went on to explain that the great majority of objects that re-enter the earth's atmosphere disintegrate owing to the intense heat created by re-entry. Furthermore, only a small percentage of objects ever re-enter over land, since water covers 75 per cent of the Earth's surface.
Despite the peculiarity of the incident, the Egyptian media has waxed cryptic regarding the particulars of the event. Other than the afore-mentioned headline, the only Egyptian media source to pick up the story was the TV show Editor-in-Chief. Its host, Hamdi Kandil, recounted a report by a Kuwaiti newspaper, which alleged that the explosion of the state- owned Al-Rawdatein Oil Company was a direct result of the spacecraft's debris. Not exactly central Egypt, but close enough.
It is important to note that this is only one spacecraft out of the many that are circling the Earth. With the increasing number of spacecraft and satellites, "man-made objects re-enter the earth's atmosphere periodically," said Reimann. But the ability to track them when they re-enter is still non-existent.
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