German Satellite Just Missed Crashing into Beijing

At this point, our orbit is one giant international incident waiting to happen.

Hey, remember that German space telescope that crashed back to Earth last October? We termed it Satellite of Death II, and as it turns out, we really weren't that far off with our taxomonic efforts. The European Space Agency has disclosed that the telescope, named Rosat, was awfully close to smacking into Beijing, China's capital city and home to more than 20 million people. The agency's calculations show that had the satellite remained aloft for seven more minutes after entering Earth's atmosphere, it would have hit Beijing. While the satellite crashed into the Indian Ocean, had it hit Beijing, the results would have been disastrous, the ESA says. The satellite's remnants were travelling at about 280 miles per hour, and larger pieces of debris would have left craters, damaged buildings, and very likely casualties. Under the laws of space (well, UN conventions on space, at least), Germany would have had to foot the bill for all damages incurred. Rosat was one of three spacecraft to have crashed back to Earth in recent months. Earlier this month, Russia's Phobos-Grunt probe crashed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile, and in September, NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, the original Satellite of Death, crashed somewhere in the Pacific.