Yes Folks, this is it. It’s Friday already and the UARS Satellite has begun its painful journey back to Earth, where it could or could not yes hit someone or something in the process. According to NASA, the UARS Satellite will break up into pieces on re-entry, most of them are going to burn out in the upper atmosphere but others are going to survive the re-entry. These pieces range from 10 pounds to 300  pounds!!  The odds that you are going to be hit by one of them: 1 in 21 trillion. Do you still feel lucky? If you don’t, pray that you are hit by the smaller ones ’cause in addition to their staggering speed, they are going to be hot as hell from their fiery re-entry into our atmosphere.

Hit the break to read more and find out where is the the satellite going to crash.

The best guess so far is that the 20-year-old Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite will hit sometime on Friday afternoon Eastern time. The latest calculations indicate that it will not be over the United States, Canada and Mexico during that time.

Until Thursday, every continent but Antarctic was a potential target. Predicting where and when the freefalling satellite will land is an imprecise science, but officials should be able to narrow it down a few hours ahead.

While most of the satellite pieces will disintegrate, 26 large metal chunks — the largest about 300 pounds — are expected to survive, hit and scatter somewhere on the planet. With nearly three-quarters of the world covered in water, chances are that it will be a splashdown.

If the re-entry is visible, “it’ll look like a long-lived meteor,” said Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

The odds of someone somewhere on Earth getting struck by the NASA satellite are 1 in 3,200. But any one person’s odds are astronomically lower — 1 in 21 trillion.

“You’re way more likely to be hit by lightning” than by the satellite, McDowell said.

NASA has warned people not to touch any satellite part they might chance upon. There are no hazardous chemicals on board, but people can get hurt by sharp edges, the space agency said.

Ok, now that is bullshit and they know it. The satellite could have a number of nasty shit that clung to it during its  stay in orbit around the Earth. Sharp edges and space radiation are the least of your worries. Back in 2007 an American spy satellite fell back to earth and crash-landed in Peru. Within hours of it’s landing people in the vicinity of the crash site started to get sick with a mysterious disease. You are welcome to Google this to fact-check but the reports about this event differ a lot, some say the symptoms were those of a stomach flu, others that it was radiation poisoning, some say there was 600 sick and others that it was just 200. Whatever the case is, I’d stay the hell away from that shit if I were you. Although if you can get a couple of pictures for your old friend Jhonny, I’ll be grateful.

In case you want to track the movements of this satellite, here’s a link. The server was a bit busy the last time I checked but it should be easier to access later. Or maybe not, I don’t know. Give it a try:
2011 UARS satellite tracker

And here is NASA’s UARS info page (a bit lamer than the previous link):
UARS Updates

To read more about the UARS Satellite visit npr.org:
Old NASA Satellite To Tumble To Earth On Friday

While you read, I will be running for cover.