Space junk near miss with airliner!

[Dave Homewood]

Plane has close shave with space junk
A Chilean Airbus narrowly missed being hit by space junk after entering New Zealand air space last night
28 March 2007

Auckland Airport
Pieces of space junk from a Russian satellite coming out of orbit narrowly missed hitting a jetliner on its way to Auckland.

The pilot of the Lan Chile Airbus A-340 notified air traffic controllers in Auckland that he saw flaming space junk pass both in front and behind his jet at about 10pm last night, around ten minutes after it entered New Zealand air space.

Airways New Zealand was warned by Russian authorities almost two weeks ago that a satellite would be entering the earth's atmosphere sometime today between 10.30am and midday. Spokesman Ken Mitchell is disturbed that the information was incorrect. He says times and locations given for satellites coming out of orbit are usually quite precise.

The Lan Chile flight from Santiago landed safely at Auckland Airport just before 4am. A formal incident report will be filed with the Civil Aviation Authority.



© 2007 NZCity, NewsTalkZB

[flyjoe180]

The pilot of the Lan Chile Airbus A-340 notified air traffic controllers in Auckland that he saw flaming space junk pass both in front and behind his jet at about 10pm last night, around ten minutes after it entered New Zealand air space.

Airways New Zealand was warned by Russian authorities almost two weeks ago that a satellite would be entering the earth's atmosphere sometime today between 10.30am and midday.

Russia (Moscow) is GMT+3 hours, NZ is GMT+12. At 2200 NZST, it would have been 1300 in Moscow. Not far off the estimated time the junk was expected, if you use Russian time. Maybe someone at Airways didn't convert the time difference? Or the Russians didn't state which time they were using?

Anyway, if Mir was anything to go by, the ETA of space junk is the least of their problems, they were probably more concerned about WHERE it was going to land, and not WHEN!

[flyjoe180]

United States space agency Nasa is convinced flaming objects falling perilously close to an Auckland-bound jet on Tuesday night were not from a Russian satellite.

www.stuff.co.nz/4009040a11.html