Skylab target still unknown

Press, 10 July 1979, Page 1

Skylab target still unknown

NZPA-Reuter Washington Skylab continued its rapidly accelerating descent towards Earth as space officials predicted that the 78-tonne space station would most probably re-enter the atmosphere and break up some time tomorrow. Huge pieces of the windmill-like craft, some weighing several tonnes, will rain down on a large and as yet unknown section of the Earth after the space laboratory disintegrates at a point 90km above the Earth’s surface. Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which is

revising its estimates daily, said that steadily increasing drag on Skylab could move the re-entry date up to late today. The official prediction issued on Sunday was that the craft, which was in an orbit about 190 km above the Earth, would re-enter some time between 12.30 p.m. tomorrow and 5.30 a.m. on Thursday, New Zealand time. The “window” for probable re-entry will get smaller as Skylab’s orbit narrows, and N.A.S.A. said it would be certain of the actual time and path of descent only two hours before it occurred. N.A.S.A., which sent the

craft into orbit in 1973, maintains that there should be little worry about nearly 500 Skylab pieces — the largest weighing 2250 kilograms — that are expected to survive the fiery re-entry. Its computers have calculated that the odds against one specific' person being struck by a piece of the Skylab debris are about 600 billion to one. The United States Government has promised to pay any damages.

While a few people are taking measures verging on the frantic — people fleeing their homes in India, an American woman heading for Norway to

avoid the flight path — most are taking a much lighter view of the whole affair.

A Las Vegas casino owner is taking bets on which of the 50 states of the United States Skylab will come down; newspapers are offering Skylab insurance policies; entrepreneurs are making fast dollars with such novelties as the Skylab prevention helmet equipped with an “early warning spike”; and others are painting bullseye targets on the roofs of their buildings, joking that the Government never hits what it is aiming at