1) Along with the iPad's flat shape, the metal rod and the cylindrical thing (the GPS tracker?) underneath it acted to weigh and stabilize it. Look at the video: after some initial tumbling, it stabilizes and takes a flat, horizontal attitude throughout the fall. The bottom of the iPad is always level with the horizon.

As a result, the flat iPad starts to create it's own lift-effect, slowing the ascend down. It starts to glide, kind of like a falling leaf.

Analyzing the the video, especially the imagery of the last second before impact on a frame-by-frame basis, you can see that the ground upon impact is not smeared in individual frames, but visible in all detail. This simply shows that the speed upon ground impact was not high at all. It makes a relatively gentle, gliding landing with a speed of at best a few meters/second.

2) As others remarked, it did not drop from space. 30 km is nowhere near the boundary of space. Even (a few, military) aircraft can and do fly at 30 km altitude. It's airspace, not Space.

The authors propose a link in their paper to fragments of comet 12P/Pons-Brooks.

This is nonsense however, as pointed out here: http://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2011/10/ot-1883-zacatecas-observation-of.html

The earth has its closest approach to the 12P/Pons-Brooks orbit near December 6th, not August 12th (see diagrams in the link above). Hence, fragments of the latter cannot pass close to earth mid-august (and they do not come even particularly close on 6 December, as the minimal earth to comet orbit distance is still 0.2 AU, i.e. the comet passes closer to the orbit of Venus than to the orbit of Earth).

The whole story has very little substantial fact behind it, and factual errors such as pointed out above do not promote confidence.

Actually, the human eye is still beter at detecting trails on plates than automated systems are, especially where fainter trails are concerned. Automated system also have serious difficulty discerning between real NEA trails and trails from cosmic ray impacts on the sensor.

Spacewatch used automated detection, nevertheless human inspectors discivered 43 additional asteroid trails on the images between 2004 and 2006: trails that the automated routines missed.

Interesting as it is, this is not a "first". The Spacewatch program "crowdsourced" the search for NEA by using volunteer plate inspectors between 2004 and 2006 (the Spacewatch FMO project) and discovered 43 new NEA this way (http://fmo.lpl.arizona.edu/discoveries.cfm). I personally discovered 2005 GG81, a small Amor asteroid, as a volunteer plate reviewer in this project.

It currently is in a 198 x 345 km orbit inclined 42.8 degrees.

Actually, many/most countries are signatory to the Space Treaty that specifically states (amongst other things) that any space debris landing on their territory has to be turned over to the country who launched it, if the latter wishes so. So yes: by international law, UARS remains US property.

But of course, the Russians may always decide that the last Soyuz currently attached is "safe" after February 2012 after all.

That is indeed the rpoblem: the manned Soyuz is launched by the same type of rocket that failed with the last Progress.

So the concern is that no new Soyuz will go up for a while if they do not sort out the cause of the malfunction quickly. In that case, the Soyuz coupled to ISS at the moment will have no replacement. It will have to return before February 2012 as a safe function of it cannot be guaranteed after that date. Because of the wintertime conditions hampering a safe landing, it will actually have to leave ISS in November at the latest. Any astro/kosmonauts onboard ISS will have to take that last Soyuz back otherwise they will be marooned on the space station.

The problem is not supplies: there are enough supplies in the ISS already to last untill after the winter.

The problem is that the only remaining return Soyuz module apparently is not fit to function untill next spring. So it has to return earlier, if no replacement arrives before that point. The hazard of a landing under winter (darkness) condition means that it cannot return later than November. Leaving the ISS with no return vehicle after November.

So not, SpaceX can not come to the rescue....

Remember that we are talking about stuff that moves at 7.5 km per second. With a fraction of a second uncertainty in the orbit, those 335 meter could have been reduced to zero meter. Assuming the 335 meter was right in the fligthpath of ISS rather than above or under it, 335 meter represents a difference of 0.04 seconds in time....

Here's an image I took, using the 0.61-meter F/10 Cassegrain of Sierra Stars Obs. in California:

http://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2011/06/ot-close-encounters-of-rocky-kind-2011.html

Actually, no:

1) the satellites will increasingly *not* be there after 2016. They don't have endless lives. That is the whole point, if you'd cared to read the original newsitem.
2) if funding for mission maintenance is dropped, these satellites will go out of control. Then some of them might still be still up after 2016, but with controlled attitude lost their sensors will no longer automatically be pointed towards earth. I.e., they will be useless bricks circling Earth and your APT receiver will be useless as well..

In absolute terms, but not in relative terms. The average Dutchman can buy as much here for his/her salary as the average US citizen in the US can for his/her. Added to this should be the fact that poverty levels (i.e. the relative number of poor people) in the Netherlands are much lower than in the US. Dutch also tend to be well-educated (we are among the highest educated people in the world). 8% of our population has a university degree (and that is a real university, not a college) and 30% of our population has an advanced level degree ("college").

With respect to cars etc.: we are not a car-oriented society. We are a small country, and a lot of people use public transport, which is very good (even though we complain about it) and brings us everywhere without having to wait a half day.

I had a relationship with a US expat for a while, and have an expat US/British colleague. Their life is dull, because they usually form their own social circles and don't integrate well into Dutch society.