Christmas Island has been confirmed by NASA as existence in the generalized neighborhood where its Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) reentered the atmosphere. Unfortunately whatever expanse enthusiasts haw encounter themselves potty by the expanse agency's ingest of Christmastime Island as a landmark.

Kiritimati, AKA Christmastime Island (From Google Maps)
The prototypal difficulty is that there are quaternary places titled Christmastime Island. NASA previously predicted that its UARS would reenter somewhere around Canada, so whatever strength conceive that the authority was referring to the Christmastime Island in Nova Scotia. Then there's the Christmastime Island meet southward of Jakarta. That's not it either. It's also not the Christmastime Island settled nearby Tasmania.

The Christmastime Island referred to by NASA is most probable the island more commonly titled Kiritimati (Google Maps). It's settled nearby the equator in the Pacific Ocean most 1,200 miles southward of Hawaii. This is (as NASA described it) a rattling sparsely populated Atlantic of the world. The 5,000 or so grouping of Kiritimati springy mostly in separation from the rest of the world, and the island's exclusive indigenous mammal is a work that belike isn't rattling indigenous. It belike arrived on trading vessels predating Captain Cook's expedition of the Pacific.

According to NASA, its UARS reentered the region around at 14.1 degrees southward latitude, and 170.2 degrees westerly longitude (Google Maps). Plugging those coordinates into Google maps reveals that the expanse detritus reentered the region meet northerly of the tiny histrion Islands. The coordinates are also most 2,000 miles westerly of Kiritimati, AKA Christmastime Island, so it seems unnecessarily unclear to ingest "Christmas Island" as a landmark.

We've included a transpose of the Atlantic below, but see liberated to meet Google Maps in either of the above course for more perspective.

In this transpose the chromatic evaluation represents the line and longitude where NASA says the UARS detritus fell. The A evaluation represents Christmastime Island, AKA Kiritimati. (From Google Maps)