[UPDATE: Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log is reporting that the satellite will definitely come down on Friday, though NASA is not sure yet exactly when and where.]

[UPDATE 2: Emily Lakdawalla at The Planetary Society blog has lots of detailed info now.]

By now you’ve probably heard that NASA’s Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS, pronounced YOO-arz, though in my head it’s always "You arse!") will burn up in our atmosphere some time between Thursday and Saturday. The satellite was decommissioned in 2005 and they used the remaining fuel to lower the orbit. It’s been slowly getting lower since then, but recently reached the part of our air where it slows and drops dramatically. As you can see from this plot (click to embiggen), it’s dropped from about 375 km to 200 in just the last few months, and down it’ll come later this week.

No one knows where or when it will hit, since the final flight path will depend on changing atmospheric conditions, orientation of the satellite, and so on. Most of the 6 ton satellite will burn up, but some two dozen or so pieces are expected to survive re-entry.

Speaking of which: I’m seeing some concern over people getting hit by this thing. The odds of that are extremely low. It’s possible — NASA rates the odds at about 1 in 3200 — but highly unlikely. Mind you, those are the odds of anyone getting hit by debris. The odds of a specific person, say me, getting hit are far lower — if I’m doing this math correctly, you’d multiply that number by the population of the Earth, nearly seven billion people. So the odds of me (or you, or pick someone) specifically getting hit are about 1 in 20 trillion. Pretty long odds.

In the meantime, on September, 15th, "amateur" astronomer Thierry Legault was able to capture video of the satellite while it passed over his location:

Cool, eh? You can see the rotation; it’s tumbling, apparently. Out of power, it can’t keep the correct attitude, and over time something has caused it to spin. Maybe it was a collision, or maybe it’s from other subtle but persistent forces over the years (solar wind, light pressure, drag through our tenuous upper atmosphere, slow fuel leak, what have you). Here are some stills from Thierry’s video to make that more clear:

Pretty cool. So stay tuned. I’ll update with more info when I get it; we’ll know the re-entry time and location much better as the week progresses. I’ll be tweeting about it as well as soon as I find anything out.

Credits: Orbit plot: Jonathan McDowell; UARS images: Thierry LeGault.

The naming of names for astronomical satellites is a funny game. Most are weird acronyms (WFPC, STIS, NICMOS are all Hubble cameras), which many times are puns on the mission itself (FAST). Some are named simply, after astronomers who contributed to the field of study (Chandra, Spitzer). The Swift satellite is not an acronym or named after anyone. It’s just a swift satellite.

Right now, the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope is very close to launch. But "GLAST" is not the best name. I worked on the education and public outreach for the mission for years, and sometimes the hardest part was using that name (though it made for some fun puns; I wrote articles like "The GLAST Resort"). Because of the picture we used a lot for GLAST, shown on the left, I called it the "flying cheese block".

It’s time to rename GLAST into something cool. And NASA wants you to help.

Got an idea for a new name for GLAST? Send it to NASA (through Sonoma State University)! There are some things you need to know, though. For example, it’s a gamma-ray observatory, so if you want to name it after some gamma ray pioneer, they can’t still be alive (that’s a NASA tradition). The name should be catchy, but not too silly (it’s a $350 million mission that’s managed by both NASA and the Department of Energy, so some modicum of decorum is necessary). It needs to be simple, and easy to say (so Mxyzpltlk is out, even if you try to say it backwards).

I actually don’t have too many ideas. Jan van Paradijs was a beloved astronomer who worked on gamma-ray astrophysics, but his name is too hard to spell for most Americans. Maybe some variation on it?

Please, no Mr. Spaceypants. It doesn’t matter anyway; this isn’t a vote or a contest, just a way to suggest cool names for the mission.

To get you started: GLAST will look at high-energy radiation from black holes, active galaxies, gamma-ray bursts, antimatter annihilation, and even from solar flares. If you go the acronym route, GR is not a bad combo for some good words (can we get GROK out of it? OGRE?). Gamma rays are Super High Energy, too. Also, it’s not a traditional telescope, either.

The deadline is March 31, 2008. So get thinking! Post your suggestions in the comments. Let’s see what we can come up with!