Sleeping Satellites! Where Were You During Beijing's Lucky Miss?

Do you remember what you were doing at around 10am in the morning on Sunday, October 23 last year? Little did we all know that it could have been our last moments on Earth.

At some time between 9.45 and 10.15am Beijing time on October 23, 2011, a German satellite entered the earth’s atmosphere and took around 15 minutes to hit the Earth. What we didn’t know until just recently is that Beijing came very close to being the site of the collision. According to London’s Daily Telegraph, the head of the European Space Agency’s debris team, Heiner Klinkrad, has now divulged, "Our calculations showed that, if Rosat had crashed to the ground just seven to 10 minutes later, it would have hit Beijing."

What does that mean?

It would have meant up to 1.87 tons of satellite would have hurtled towards our city at speeds over 280mph. "The impact would be similar to, say, an airliner having dropped an engine," said Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics before the satellite de-orbited. "It would damage whatever it fell on, but it wouldn't have widespread consequences." This makes the odds more reassuring, but no amount of statistical unlikelihood is likely to bring comfort if you’re the poor sap unlucky enough to be the bull’s-eye.

Now the experts are saying that it could well have been “the worst disaster in the history of space exploration,” complete with the destruction of buildings, massive craters upon impact and unknown numbers of casualties.
If there had been satellite-related destruction, Beijing would have sent the bill to Germany; according to an international agreement, when things plummet down as space debris, fixing the craters they cause is the responsibility of the country that originally launched it into orbit.

This new revelation about Beijing’s near-miss also means that the last things that you may ever have read were “Scrumthing for the Weekend: Who's Showing the Rugby World Cup Final?” or “Ich Bin Ein Beijinger: Seen and B-Scenes” or “Is China Getting Fitter or Fatter?” (If the satellite had hit us, the apropos adjective would have been “flatter.”)

The good news is that this satellite was one of the last ones in orbit to be so dangerously “durable.” In other words, it was launched before satellite-launching countries agreed in 1991 to make them a little less deadly on reentering the atmosphere. Phew.

This entire incident has been of much amusement to those at the Shanghaiist: “What is a Beijinger to do? If it isn't the carcinogenic smog, it's nuclear meltdowns and satellites falling from the sky. The government obviously needs to consider constructing a giant diaphragm-shaped dome sturdy enough to shield Beijing from any future harm. We recommend The Simpsons Movie for inspiration.”

Well, we’d rather die in Beijing than live in Shanghai. And what was it that Nietzsche said? “Whatever space debris doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.” Something like that.

So what were you doing that morning? If that was the last thing you ever did, would it have been a good way to go?

Leave a comment and let us know. And if you want to badmouth Shanghai at the same time, we can't stop you.

Image: Metro