Do you think?

Question

with all the satlites in space if they just somehow stopped working and moving and came crashing towards earth we would be dead. Insted of the whole astroid thing us humans killed ourselves because of these satlites. Is there something upthere that would stop it or what?

Answer 1

Thanks for your question blakeada. Of the hundreds of satellites orbiting the earth,none are built to survive a re-entry
back through the atmosphere. The space shuttle,Soyuz, and Apollo etc. manned spacecraft had either heat resistant tiles or ablative plastic that protected the spacecraft and the
astronauts upon re-entry.All man made satellites eventually will "die" and fall back through the atmosphere.Parts of many satellites have survived and crashed to the earth,but are much too small to have any significant impact.Examples are the the U.S.'s Skylab,the Soviets Mir space station, and of course the Columbia Space shuttle that burned up during re-entry due to a suitcase sized hole punched through its left wing's leading edge during liftoff.Scientists are worried about asteroids and comets larger than 1 kilometer in size.Because of their size and composition,they would most certainly have a catastrophic global impact, not any man made satellites.Just for your information, there are fewer scientists watching for these larger asteroids that could impact the earth, than the average staff at a Burger King.

Answer 2

What would prevent this from happening is the laws of physics. They can't just stop and fall to earth all at once. They don't stay up there because they are working. They stay up there because of their momentum, which changes only imperceptible, even over long periods of time.

Most satellites will come down eventually. Some in dozens or hundreds of years. Some in millions. And when they do, they will burn up in the atmosphere. Some parts may fall to the ground, but the overall risk is about the same as being bitten by a cobra in Antarctica.

Answer 3

No, that would be only a small problem. The big problem would be all the services that no longer worked. No live TV from the other side of the world, no GPS, no weather satellite pictures. The total tons of man made stuff in orbit is quite small compared to even the smallest asteroid and it would be no problem at all.

Answer 4

The satellites that we have up in orbit are FAR too small to reach the surface of the Earth if they fell out of orbit. They would burn up from the friction in the atmosphere way before they got anywhere close to the surface. The asteroids and meteors that scientists are afraid of are kilometers across, and traveling much faster than a satellite would be when falling out of orbit.

Answer 5

The total mass of all satellites is not enough to do any serious damage on earth. Very few if any people would be hurt or killed in the situation you imagine in your question.

Furthermore, such an event is really not possible. Something totally unimaginable would have to happen to cause that.

So don't worry about it. Go put your ear to your girlfriend's bellybutton and see if you can hear the ocean.

Answer 6

That won't happen. The inertia of the satellites will prevent them from falling. And even if the orbits of the lower-altitude satellites decayed due to atmospheric friction, the satellites would burn up in the atmosphere (they're too small to reach the surface). Our satellites pose no threat to us.

Answer 7

well its impossible for them to just stop moving. and if they did we would probably be all right. there is something like 100-200 satellites up there but their not that huge. we definitely dont have the technology to stop it at all, thats too short notice. their impacts wouldnt cause that much of a disaster i dont think, unless they hit buildings or something.

Answer 8

no i dont think we wud be dead . we have developed enough tech nology to save our earth from being hitted by these satellites.

Answer 9

That's very unlikely.

Answer 10

I dont really know...