NewScientist.com news service
13:13 30 April 03

An Italian science satellite, which was descending in an uncontrolled spiral towards the Earth, has crashed safely into the sea. People in 39 nations beneath its flight path had been warned that debris could crash in their countries.

The risk of anyone being hit by fragments of the 1400 kilogram BeppoSAX satellite was always fairly small - one in 2000, according to the Italian Space Agency (ASI). But regular updates were issued by ASI to countries under the satellite's equatorial orbit.

The flight path passed over some of the most heavily and densely populated countries in the world, such as Indonesia and Singapore. Some had issued public warnings, while others were considering closing their airspace.

BeppoSAX was switched off in April 2002 and had been falling towards Earth ever since in an uncontrolled descent. Since the switch-off, when communication was lost, NASA had tracked the satellite's decaying orbit.

But only in its final hours - as the satellite entered the Earth's dense atmosphere and broke up - could ASI predict where the debris was going to land. The last observations on Tuesday indicate that the satellite fragments splashed down in the Pacific at 2206 GMT, about 400 kilometres northwest of the Galapagos Islands.