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The best time to view the meteor shower: Wednesday morning, between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. EST
The best place to go: Leonids Live! from NASA |
The Meteors Are Coming
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Time to take a shower. It's the most
intense day of the Leonid meteor storm -- and while stargazers across
the globe settle down for a romantic cascade of shooting stars,
scientists and corporations scramble to save their
satellites from the biggest Earth-bound bombardment the space age has
ever seen. As you read this, tiny fragments from the Comet
Tempel-Tuttle's tail are whizzing toward our unsuspecting planet at a
dizzying 155,000 mph. You, of course, are protected by many miles of
flammable, oxygen-rich atmosphere. The satellite your pager uses -- not
to mention your phone company, your cable company and your government
-- isn't so lucky. Our entire orbital army, more than 600 satellites strong, risks
being shot with the equivalent of .22-caliber bullets.
Which explains why NASA and its peers in the private sector are
rotating their high-tech machinery away from the storm, powering down,
and wishing on a star that they won't be the unlucky one. "The chance
of any one satellite getting smacked by a particle is probably less
than one in one thousand," said Don Yeomans of NASA's JPL labs. "But on
the other hand, some of these satellites are worth hundreds of millions
of dollars, so you do take whatever precautions you can." Even a single
direct hit could cause a communications disaster: Remember the
malfunction of ComSat 3 earlier this year that put most cell phones
and beepers to sleep? Now, some of us would see that as a
blessing in disguise...