NASA: 6-ton satellite hits Earth; location unknown

Cape Canaveral (US), Sept 24: NASA says a defunct 6-ton satellite has fallen from the sky. The agency posted on its official Twitter site that the spacecraft crashed through the atmosphere early today (Sept 24).

A location was not immediately known. Most of it was believed to have burned up. The Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite was NASA''s biggest spacecraft to tumble out of orbit, uncontrolled, in 32 years.

UARS was launched aboard space shuttle Discovery in 1991. NASA decommissioned the satellite in 2005, after moving it into a lower orbit that cut its life short by two decades.

Bits of space junk re-enter the atmosphere virtually every day. No injuries have ever been reported from it.

AP