A 12,500-pound decommissioned satellite that was lazily falling toward the Earth over the past two days finally came down around midnight Friday, NASA said early Saturday. The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) fell back to Earth between 11:23 p.m. Friday and 1:09 a.m. Saturday, NASA said in an update on its website. The Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California said the satellite penetrated the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, the agency said. It is not yet known when exactly the satellite hit Earth, and whether it ended up in water or on land, NASA said. The satellite took longer than expected to return to Earth after 20 years in space. Unpredictable, and completely out of control, the satellite was expected to shower 26 pieces of space junk across a 500-mile linear crash zone. Most of its parts are believed to be burned up. For two days, NASA had predicted that its satellite would arrive Friday afternoon or evening. But the satellite slowed down Thursday and Friday, showing no eagerness to leave space. "There are random forces of nature acting on the satellite that we can neither control nor predict," NASA spokeswoman Beth Dickey said Friday evening. "Very small changes have very large consequences over time, and in this case, the change has been in the orientation of the spacecraft."
