Emiratis among scientists closely observing space debris speeding towards Earth

ABU DHABI // Two Emirati scientists from the UAE Space Agency watched from eight-and-a-half miles up as debris crashed to Earth at more than 38,000 kilometres per hour on Friday.

The scientists were among a group of 12 airborne observers from Nasa, the European Space Agency and the Abu Dhabi-based International Astronomy Centre studying the object, which was believed to be between one and three metres long and from a satellite.

According to the scientists, who were observing from the safe distance of 300 kilometres towards the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sri Lanka at an altitude of 13,700 metres, the object resembled an asteroid.

Their plane flew from Al Bateen airport in Abu Dhabi at 5.15am and returned at 4.30pm.

Khaled Al Hashmi, the director of space missions management at the UAE Space Agency, was on the flight. He said: “The study of any falling objects from space satellites into the Earth’s atmosphere is very important. How it would fragment and how it would land on the Earth would have a big impact on humans.

“The space debris research is very important for the UAE because of the crowd of satellites around the Earth – and more are being added.

“The whole mission is new for the UAE, which started work on this project about a month back.”

The debris was first seen in 2013 by Arizona University’s Catalina Astronomical Observatory.

“Such research helps prepare us for an early warning and to predict its impact on our atmosphere, so this event would contribute to our [safety] modelling,” Mr Al Hashmi said.

He said the object was visible to the naked eye and that it resembled a huge bulb. He believed it would have fragmented and the debris would have burnt up in the air.

“But we don’t exactly know whether some debris fell down to the ocean,” he added.

“In fact, some scientists were observing from the surface but they would not have been so lucky because of cloud cover, which means that we were very fortunate up there to take photos of the object. This was a historic moment for the UAE for watching and capturing [in photographs] an artificial space object so closely.”

Nasa’s Peter Jenniskens, senior research scientist at the Seti Institute, USA, said: “Observation of the object was very brief, just a few seconds. It looked like a slow-moving shooting star.

“We don’t know exactly where this object finally landed as we were flying at 45,000 feet above the ocean.

“The [space] community investigates these objects, looking at what can be done to prevent space debris coming down and what can be done to prevent an asteroids hitting us,” he said.

“I think that the UAE Space Agency can use this experience in future after observing and capturing these images.

“This mission has been extremely successful and we got incredible images of the entry of the object.”

anwar@thenational.ae