I venture to say that just about everything this satellite is supposed to be doing at its 22,236 mile geosynchronous orbit, could be accomplished at almost 1000X's CLOSER at an altitude of only 25 miles!   

At this altitude 99.5% of the atmosphere is gone.  Is this not the EDGE OF SPACE?

Because the satellite does not have BUOYANCY capability, it has to be out at the 22,236 mile orbit, or else it will do what it just did, i.e. disperse toxic compounds all the way to the ground.  

Not to mention the "1 in 3200 chance of a person getting hit?   Where'd they come up with that # anyway?   Oh yeah, they pulled it out of the magic satellite trajectory  hat.    I mean, sheesh, what would astronaut Jesus do?   He'd get INVITED out into outer space, would he not?   And so can we, and accomplish just about everything at 22 miles that we're presently struggling to do 1000X's farther out!   Look Ma!  No more blasting off required!  Yayyy!  

The planned UARS mission, from its very conception on the drawing board, risked human life, showing early on, before ANYTHING was built, that this would be the eventual environmental footprint outcome of the program.   I would venture to say, without even looking in the UARS document that there was a section addressing the dispersement of TONS of toxic material, and contribution to the destruction of the ozone layer with hundreds of tons of aluminum oxide / hydrochloric acid to do what?…  

"$750 million UARS mission was designed to measure ozone and other chemical compounds found in Earth's ozone layer in order to better understand how the upper atmosphere affects our planet. It also recorded wind speeds and temperatures in the stratosphere, as well as the energy Earth received from the sun."

By NASA's method,  the very thing that they are trying to measure is being unnecessarily despoiled even that much further!   On the way out to geosynchronous orbit with the spewing of SOLID FUEL rocket boosters.  And then on re-entry, when it is worn out, defunct, & no more rocket fuel to keep it in place.  Then, it  BURNS UP *****while re-entering the upper atmosphere, to still have 300kg chunks of debris hit the earth, over a huge swath of land.  They hope for the ocean, but don't always get that result.

Contrary to what the practice presently is for dealing with useless, orbiting satellites, they really need to be captured, and then jettisoned AWAY from the Earth, to prevent exactly what's presently occurring.  Don't believe NASA shrugging it off like this is such a benign thing, and nothing to really worry about.   Why?  Because of the exponential law of manifestation.  Henry Ford went from one 'Model T' to manufacturing 250,000 Model T's in six years.   This stuff that's being built by automation and robots is getting easier all the time for other countries to replicate.  One falling satellite over time turns into many, for what goes up, must eventually come back down.

MORE OF THE SAME is on the way.  For it's a lot cheaper to let defunct satellites burn up in our fragile atmospheric envelope, then it is to responsibly send up a rocket, containing many small maneuvering rockets, to then send payloads like this OUT of earth's orbit, and into deep space.

Yes, we could do just about everything at a 25 mile altitude (except for weightlessness experiments), that we're trying to accomplish at 22,236 miles! 

'Nazi turned into NASA', and continues to subtly wage war with their 'poison fruit', SOLID FUEL rocketry program. Though now it is a war against the environment, and all life that depends upon it...