The second large satellite in a month is about to fall to Earth in an uncontrolled re-entry. ROSAT, a joint project of Germany, the US, and the UK, was launched in 1990 and gave astronomers a look at the universe in the X-Ray part of the spectrum. It has been defunct and drifting in space since 1998.
Most of the satellite will burn up during re-entry, but, like UARS last month, substantial pieces of ROSAT are expected to reach the surface. Also like UARS, those pieces are expected to fall into the ocean, but the exact landing area cannot yet be determined.
Falling satellites belong to the space junk problem. No provision was made to safely dispose of these things after their useful lifetimes were over, so they drift in space, threatening to collide with other objects in orbit, and some eventually barrel back to Earth in uncontrolled descents, threatening to destroy property and possibly lives on the surface. One proposal to deal with the space junk problem in the future is to require a plan to safely de-orbit a satellite once its mission is complete. That might increase the cost of a satellite, but it would also be a step in the right direction.
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