UARS Nailed Down

With the help of the Pentagon's Joint Space Operations Center, NASA has been able to announce where pieces of its huge UARS satellite fell. It turns out the pieces fell over a wide area of the South Pacific, well away from any large landmass.

Immediately after it was clear UARS had re-entered-- because NASA knew it was no longer in space-- the space agency announced it may never know where the surviving pieces of UARS came back. The Pentagon, however, has tracking assets NASA lacks because it is charged with monitoring near-Earth space, searching for possible national security threats. Obviously, those assets would be geared to track objects re-entering Earth's atmosphere.