neptune, 125 years ago. that s not all they were watching. it s over here, in the northeast direction. they noticed the dying research is the was over north america on one of its last laps around the earth. overtime the or built slowly degrades. the best example of something like that where we sort of prevented it is the hollow. the window of when and where it would crash kept changing as the day went on. solar activity has been causing the atmosphere to puff up and settle down again so that changes the amount of air drag that the satellite is experiencing. the f. a. a. put out a warning to pilots and crewmembers to be on the lookout for the satellite as it disintegrated back to earth. that didn t phase some people. if it s going to happen, it s going to happen. can t stop it. everybody on the ground is going to have the same chance, tanks the upper atmospheric research satellite was carried aboard a shuttle in 1991. it weighed six tons, about the size of a scho
scene with more on the accident investigation. joe? reporter: and this event is highly popular in part because it s so risky. they refer to it sometimes as aerial nascar. so there are going to be crashes; but ntsb investigators now at the scene to figure out why this crash went so horribly wrong. i just couldn t believe my eyes. brad pillow was taking photos watching as the galloping ghost began to climb but suddenly made a strange sound, plummeted to the ground and broke into a million pieces. shrapnel ripped through the bodies of dozens of spectators in the vip section up front. i saw so much material go flying up in the air. ist just stunned. everybody was stunned. witnesses are calling leeward a hero for apparently ditching his plane on the tarmac. the stuntman narrowly avoided the grand stands where thousands more could have been directly hit. i think the fie lot in the last two seconds pulled up because he saw the bleachers, and i would guess he probably sav