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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SiouxPal who wrote (103349)	3/28/2007 4:27:45 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Respond to of 361428

Space fireball just misses jetliner Was it satellite debris or meteor? Aviation authorities debate incident MSNBC staff and news service reports Updated: 1:44 p.m. CT March 28, 2007 SANTIAGO, Chile - Pilots of a Chilean commercial aircraft approaching the Auckland airport in New Zealand said they spotted flaming space debris falling past their jet, the LAN Chile airline reported Wednesday. The airline said in a brief communique that the pilot, who was not identified, "made visual contact with incandescent fragments several kilometers away" on Monday. The Sydney Morning Herald reported on its Web site that pieces of a Russian satellite had narrowly missed the jet. It quoted New Zealand aviation authorities as saying that they had been warned by Russian officials two weeks ago that orbiting debris would be entering the atmosphere, but that the Russians had apparently miscalculated the entry time. The reference to the Russians may have been linked to the scheduled atmospheric re-entry of an unmanned Progress cargo ship. The craft was cast off from the international space station on Tuesday, in preparation for next month's arrival of a crew aboard a fresh Soyuz spaceship. However, the Russian space agency said the Progress was jettisoned on schedule, well after the reported fireball, and the coordinates for that re-entry did not match up with reports from the LAN Chile crew. NBC News space analyst James Oberg said one possible explanation might be that a different piece of space junk, or a natural meteor fireball, coincidentally blazed through the sky before the Progress was deorbited. Aviation authorities said the Airbus 340 had just entered New Zealand air space when the space debris was spotted. The plane landed shortly afterward at Auckland's airport, then continued on to its final destination in Sydney, Australia. The airline said it reported the incident to authorities in Chile and New Zealand. LAN said it would have no further comment. This report includes information from The Associated Press and MSNBC.com. © 2007 MSNBC Interactive URL: msnbc.msn.com © 2007 MSNBC.com